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Copyright ©2005 by Small Beer Press

First published in 2005, 2005

NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.

CONTENTS

The Pirate's True Love by Seana Graham

The Fire Girl by Marly Youmans

All The Things She Wanted by Philip Raines and Harvey Welles

You Accept What You Get When You're Eating with Death

The Mushroom Duchess by Deborah Roggie

Daylighting the Donwell River by Alette J. Willis

Native Spinsters by Diana Pharaoh Francis

"Discrete Mathematics” by Olaf and Lemeaux; or, the Severed Hand

SHH by Peter Dabbene

Bright Waters by John Brown

Contribandeaus

* * * *

Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet

No. 17, November 2005

Made by:

Gavin J. Grant & Kelly Link

With help from

Jedediah Berry, Gwyneth Merner, Erik Gallant

Contents copyright © the authors

www.smallbeerpress.com

Small Beer Press

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www.smallbeerpress.com info@smallbeerpress.com

ISSN 1544-7782

Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet looks at the number 17, November 2005, and decides it probably will go on. This zine goes out June-ish and November-ish from Small Beer Press, 176 Prospect Ave., Northampton, MA 01060. info@lcrw.net www.lcrw.net/lcrw $5 per single issue or $20/4. Various other money-laundering offers available by the dollar, pound, kilo, etc. Contents © the authors. All rights reserved. We reserve the right to squander the opportunities presented by quarterly publication. We reserve the right to live up to the Occasional Outburst subtitle which seems to have been tossed in the rejection pile somewhere along the way. Submissions, requests for guidelines, &c all good things should be sent to the address above. No SASE: no reply. Thanks for reading. These days are what we have. Are we doing as much as we could? Of course we're all busy, but is it just makework? What's the overall contribution to the Actual and Perceived Contentment Index? Printed by Paradise Copies, 30 Craft Ave., Northampton, MA 01060 413-585-0414.

The Pirate's True Love by Seana Graham

It was a fine spring morning as the pirate sat with his true love before sailing out to sea. She was wearing a long purple dress, and her cheeks were red with crying. The pirate held her hand and promised her jewels and fine clothes, but nothing helped. She would much rather have sat with the pirate till the end of time, and watched her purple dress turn to rags and then to dust than to have him sail off and find her the finest jewels in all the world. But she did not say this aloud, because she knew that the pirate would not want to sit holding her hand until the end of time, even if her dress did turn to dust. For the pirate's heart would always be with her, but his mind would be always on treasure. So, though she cried till her cheeks were red, she did not beg him to stay.

The pirate sailed away that spring morning and gave himself over to plundering and looting. He was good at his work, and lucky, and if that work involved a certain amount of anti-social behavior, well, it was what he was born to do. He was not a terribly analytical person, for he never stopped to ask himself why he needed to go around plundering and looting the high seas when all he'd ever really wanted was his ship and his men and the heart of his true love waiting back by the bay at home. Of course, he did have to pay somehow for the costly garments of satin and silk and lace he wore. True, these were not really necessary for plundering, but they did rather seem to go with the job.

After he left, the pirate's true love walked to the cliffs every day and looked out over the water. Sometimes, if she stood and stared long enough, she seemed to see the smoke of a great battle going on far out at sea. (Of course, her pirate love was by this time many leagues away, so this was either eyestrain or imagination.) And, after looking a great while, she would sigh and walk sadly back to her humble home. It might have helped pass the time if the pirate had left her some plunder to sort, or some loot to tidy, but the fact was gold and jewels had a way of slipping through pirate fingers like so much water. By the time the pirate sailed out on his next adventure, there was never much left but the pirate's mess to clean up, which she somehow could not find altogether romantic.

It was one day late in August when the pirate's true love turned from her lonely vigil on the cliffs, sighing because her humble home was now entirely too neat and tidy, now that the pirate's mess had long been cleared away—and realized that she was not alone. The truth was she never had been alone, but had just become too far-sighted to notice. But now—if she squinted—she could see that there were many other pirates’ true loves standing on the cliff, sighing and straining their eyes over the all-too-empty waters. And she had to admit that, sad though it was, it was also just a little bit silly. After all, the pirates never came home before October. Now the pirate's true love—and let us call her May, since that was her name and we do not want to lose her in the anxious throng of other true loves there on the cliff—May could be a rather enterprising young woman when she saw the need, and right away she saw the need for a Pirate Women's Auxiliary. For there is such a thing as too much looking out over the water.

The Pirate Women's Auxiliary flourished quite handsomely for a while. For one thing, with organization, only one true love needed to go and stand anxious and brooding above the cliffs on behalf of all the rest, and though at first they would quarrel among themselves for their turns, after awhile they began to devote themselves to the group's new task—fundraising. For there was quite enough wealth in the town—after all those years of relieving pirates of their treasure—to support any number of bake sales and raffles and charity balls. (Though it is true that, during these latter events, the pirates’ true loves would have to bravely blink back the tears as they thought of their bold buccaneers out looting and pillaging and not knowing what they were missing. And sadly but also truly, there was more than one pirate's true love who suddenly noticed that there were some not-too-shabby looking farmers and blacksmiths and shopkeepers around ... but that is not our story.)

The true true loves remained loyal, but a problem began to arise. For when the brave pirates returned that fall (in November, and very soggy), they found that their true loves were not oohing and ahhing over the heaps of treasure they had brought back with quite the enthusiasm the pirates were accustomed to arousing. The truth of the matter is, the fundraising had gone a little too well, and the pirates’ true loves had managed to amass pretty much all the gold and jewels and fine clothes they could ever desire—and these did not slip through their fingers like water at all. Oh, they did try to summon up the right note of gratitude at being showered with diamonds and rubies, but it was hard, as they were all secretly dying to get back to their carpentry lessons. For they had unanimously voted to use whatever excess earnings were lying around to build a nice warm tea house on top of the cliffs in time for spring, so that the lonely cliff vigil would not be quite so cold and, well, tedious. By now even the most steadfast of pirate true loves had begun to look for excuses to avoid her shift.

So the pirates were a little dismayed and the true loves were a little distracted, but if the jewels failed to excite, the handholding was still nice, and all went well through the winter. The pirates’ treasure troves slowly dwindled (and, unbeknownst to them, came back by indirect routes to their true loves’ coffers), and at last the spring day came when the pirates needs must sail to replenish their pirate hoards. So the pirates held hands with their true loves, and the true loves’ cheeks were red with crying, although noticeably less red than the year before (and some might even have been justly accused of cosmetic deception). And though their true hearts ached to see the pirate ship fade from view on the treacherous sea, they all hurried home to get the pirates’ mess cleaned up, because they were anxious to start working on a ship of their very own.

For certainly it is understandable that after you stand, year in and year out, watching a fine pirate ship fade from view on the treacherous sea, you might get some hankering to go and find out what all the fuss is about. Because it couldn't be just about the treasure, could it? (As we have seen, the pirates’ true loves had grown a little jaded about the gold, jewels, etc.) So the handiest true loves built a sturdy little vessel and the sharpest true loves studied navigation, and one warm day in August, they were ready to sail. They christened the ship the True Love (of course), and they ran up a flag made from May's purple dress (which was a much better use for it than letting it turn to rags), emblazoned with a picture of two hands clasped, and they left the now-thriving tea shop in the care of their faithful friends, who were now farmers’ true loves and blacksmiths’ true loves and shopkeepers’ true loves. And they faded slowly away from view on the treacherous sea.

When the brave pirates returned to their home by the bay (in early December and even soggier than the year before), their ship rode more lightly on the water than it had in many a year, for, truth to tell, their plundering had not come to much these last few months. Since August, in fact, they had not managed to get aboard a single fat galleon, or even raid one silent, sleeping coastal town. For just as they came within firing range of some ship or shoreline, a jaunty little ship with a purple flag (they could never get close enough to quite make out its logo, and what some of them thought they saw was too ridiculous to be believed) would race into view and warn them off with a furious blast of cannons and muskets. And though the pirates fought very bravely and fiercely, inevitably they would eventually have to make their escape, hidden by the walls of billowing smoke all around them. They were bold and fearless, but they were not stupid. They knew when they had met their match. Curiously, none of this great bombardment ever seemed to actually hit their ship, and some of the pirates swore that the enemy was purposely missing. But the other pirates only laughed at this, for the Pirates’ Code made this unthinkable. Besides, some of that musket shot had come close enough to singe the whiskers of their gorgeous pirate beards.

So now as the brave pirates alit from their ship, each walked to his humble home a little more slowly, a little less boisterously, a little less certainly than he had the previous year. (Though actually they should have been walking faster, for the treasure chests they carried were quite a bit lighter than they had been then.) They were not too sure that their true loves would love them quite so truly when they noticed that the customary shower of gold and jewels lasted for a conspicuously shorter period of time. The pirates, all in all, were a little ashamed.

But what was shame when compared to the wonder that filled each pirate's heart as he approached his true love's door—and found it locked and bolted? And what was shame compared to his consternation as he peered through a (dirty) window, and could make out no warm and glowing fire, no true love waiting next to it? And what, above all, was shame compared to the terror that seized each pirate as he stood alone in the cold, damp night and thought that some farmer ... or blacksmith ... or shopkeeper ... might well be happy in his place tonight?

Now, as each pirate was beginning to consider that treasure was a rather paltry thing compared to some other things that could be won—or lost—a pinprick of light appeared on the crest of a hill above. And it was followed by another. And another. And another. Until finally a torchlight procession could be seen wending its way swiftly down the hillside. And every pirate's heart leapt suddenly with a terrible, yearning hope that sent him running to the center of town, where the hillside road would end.

And the pirates’ true loves (after a long tramp from a secret lagoon, where a certain ship lay safely berthed for the winter) came rushing down to meet them, chattering vaguely of some Pirate Women's Auxiliary project which had unavoidably detained them. If any pirate recalled at that moment a purple flag on a distant sea, he made up his mind to forget it. For all hearts present felt, though silently, that this reunion was something rather more than the usual shower of gold and jewels.

One fine spring morning in the following year, the pirates once again sat holding hands with their true loves (none of whose cheeks were red at all, but all of whose eyes glowed beautifully). And then, a little reluctantly this time, the pirates boarded their fine ship, which soon faded from view on the treacherous sea.

And one warm day in August (for pirates are pirates, and should never be thwarted completely), the True Love sailed out after them. And so it sailed for many an August to come.

[Back to Table of Contents]

The Fire Girl by Marly Youmans

When Phoenix thinks about the fire

And grave around which they would walk

And lean, and over which the cups

Were passed, when she recalls a sheaf

Of fire-pinks on the bridge of table,

And often when she feels amused

About the queer curious child

She was, who ate the green and raw

But nothing else, with skin so pale

And tender she could never bear

The touch of selvage, seam, or tag,

When she remembers how she lived

With many tossings in the fire

Of the impetuous burning house

Ruled by a man as odd as she

But fearsome like an emperor,

When memory renews the past

Where Phoenix faced a face in earth,

Utterly perfect, curls close-clipped

And left in bowls as offerings,

Then she exults that air and pyre

Can mate to make a bright-yolked egg

That pulses with auroral rose,

And out of egg can burst the moist

Flame-fangled bird, and out of bird—The miracle of miracles

Most miracle!—can trill and flash

The syllables of word, and out

From word can hatch the mystery

Of Phoenix feeding praise to fire.

[Back to Table of Contents]

All The Things She Wanted by Philip Raines and Harvey Welles

"Most people say that the biggest trick with desire is knowing how to find what you want. But I say it's knowing what you want."

As he spoke, the stall-owner, Armitage, wiped two massive hands across a greasy Bon Jovi T-shirt. He had a belly that made him appear pregnant and the round, ever-alert eyes of an anime gamine, but to Joan, there was nothing innocent in his electric grin.

Joan shrugged. “I know what I want."

"Sure you do.” He didn't believe her. “But can you put your hands on it? Can you empty your pockets and show me, this is what I want?"

Patty had said Armitage was weird but harmless, so Joan smiled and accepted the challenge.

Clearing some old highway maps from the front counter of his stall, Armitage reached into the pocket of his leather vest. “Well let's see. Count of three. One. Two."

Joan pulled her hand out of her duffel's pocket and opened her fingers. The map that Patty had drawn on her palm was smudged by today's stuff: keys to the home she'd dreamt of for months, the two tickets Patty had tracked down for the show tonight.

"Three."

Her objects shone in the springtime sun like mica under a sparkling stream. His rectilinear, cardboard cut-out looked like something snatched out of a child's mouth.

"Know what this is?"

She shook her head.

"Kansas."

Armitage's braces flashed, making her think of neon glimpsed from the passenger seat of a car. “Saw it once in a National Geographic in a dentist waiting room. Moment I first flipped those pages, I knew that this was the place where all my dreams collected. I knew that somewhere in all that empty, empty space, my heart was buried, waiting for me to come out one springtime with a map and a shovel."

"That's very poetic."

"Kansas did that to me. What's done it to you?"

Joan stared at her scraps on the counter, trying to imagine something as powerful and clear as Armitage's childhood vision in them. Her things curled up in the late winter chill. Warped and soggy with age, his Kansas still had sharp, straighter edges.

"Guess you win."

"No, you win.” Armitage scooped up Kansas and returned it to its keeping place. “Assuming you want my expertise, ma'am."

Falteringly, Joan tried to explain what she was after, but she was distracted by the hundreds of maps that Armitage had crammed into his stall. Sheets of parchment and vellum lovingly inked and illustrated hung from the ceiling poles while a hedge of cardboard tubes surrounded the stall. Carousels heavy with road maps were so packed together, none could turn without knocking over the whole stock. The names of places she'd heard of—Buenos Aires, the County of Kent, the Kingdom of Siam—were jumbled with places Joan wished that she'd heard of—Zanopia, Van Herzen's Land, the Disputed Territory of the Final Republic.

What really caught her eye though was the single map stretched across the back of the stall, a towel-sized quilt of what looked like Washington, patched together with cut-ups from other maps and heavily marked with Tippex and pencil, arcane symbols and child's drawings. “What's that?"

"Personal project.” Armitage snapped his fingers, a failed, slippery sound. “Twy?"

His assistant emerged from the side from behind the drape of a mis-shaped African continent. At the sight of Twy, Joan almost winced, but Patty had warned him about this too: It's not that it's too horrible to describe, Joan, it's like I'm physically incapable of describing it. It was true—something in her brain refused to engage with the creature, forcing her to turn away.

Twy held up a vial of viscous, maroon liquid. When Joan didn't take it, Armitage intervened, putting the glass tube in her hands, closing her fingers around it. He explained what she had to do, and in spite of Patty's reassurances, Joan reluctantly accepted it.

"What do you want for it?"

Armitage stopped grinning but sniggered, an unnerving combination. “This one's on the house. We can talk terms with the next one."

"Next one?"

He started grinning again.

After she was done, Joan crossed the market again, looking for her Barth. Pitched along the Mall, between the splinter of the Washington Monument and the bloom of the Capitol, the market was the city's last intersection. Joan remembered a time when the grassy stretch was bare enough for Senate interns to play football, back before it had been spiked by palm trees, but despite the changes, it was still the last place where everyone could gather and share what they'd found. Stalls covered the old lawn, and as Joan meandered between them, she paused to smell fresh star fruit and crystallized ginger, enjoy the ticking of old Victorian sea clocks, feel the silk of fairy-tale ballgowns, listen to people haggling over videos of unknown episodes of Saturday Night Live. All things that had surfaced in the past few weeks. A few months ago, Joan would have explored the market, hoping to come across something new and unexpected and extraordinary and discover sudden, uncharted vistas in her heart. But now she realized it would take months to hunt through the market, weaving in and out of the thousands of stalls, unstitching her path again as she circled round and round, finding that the stalls had changed again in the intervening time, and the thought of all that searching wearied her.

Finally, she found the rare animal stall. Barth greeted her with the same bright face as he always did. “Joanie, can you believe it?"

He held up a photo of a chicken with a cartoon head. “A dodo! An actual dodo!"

Joan tried to express some sense of wonder for the thing, but the truth was she hadn't been so interested in tracking animals these last few weeks. But she couldn't tell Barth that.

He was bargaining with the stall-owner. “So we have a deal?"

"Depends. I'm very particular about what I want."

"I know, you said last week. Hamburgers."

"No, not plural. The most perfect hamburger in existence."

"That's very subjective, you know."

The stall-owner didn't say anything. Barth sighed, took out the Ziploc bag from his backpack and removed the paper napkin. The woman accepted the napkin like a communion wafer and inhaled deeply. For a moment, her face shivered, was beatified.

"Yes. Yes, this is—yes. OK—where?"

"Where did you see the dodo?"

Both Barth and the woman nodded, yes, they had a deal, and each wrote down the location on the other's notepads. Either could be lying, but trust and reputation were important in the market. With so many fabulous things continuing to appear, borne out of the deepest longings of at least one person in the city, Joan sometimes wondered if mutual respect for other people's dreams was all that kept them from wandering off on their own.

Barth had the excitement of a child realizing that there wasn't just a single jar of his favourite candy, but a huge shop full of it. Joan linked arms with him, happy to hook into the circuit of someone who could still feel these thrills. “We'll get the cameras and go out tomorrow, Joanie. Stock up on picnic supplies from Antonio's, a little dope off Phil, make it an expedition. We'll speak to the gang at the 9:30 Club tonight and—"

"The show. Right. I'm not sure about that, Barth."

"Not sure? Joanie?"

"I don't know, I just feel—I don't know. Maybe a little tired."

"But Joanie—it's Johnny Ace! First show in over fifty years! And you know how much trouble Patty went to for the tickets?"

"I know, I know, it's just—"

"'Pledging My Love', babe? You remember?"

Joan did. Three weeks ago, the two of them, Patty and Arthur had been at the Mongolian restaurant on 18th Street where they hung out every Tuesday, and bizarrely, Paul Simon's ‘The Late Great Johnny Ace’ was playing through the sound system. They'd started riffing on the idea of what a Johnny Ace gig would have been like, so the next time they'd all got together in Arthur's Aladdin's Cave of a record shop, of course Arthur unearthed a Johnny Ace CD, because he had every CD and record that had ever been cut, and they got stoned and listened to the doomed ‘50s singer crooning ‘Pledging My Love’ in his weird, crying voice, and then Elvis Presley covering it, Aaron Neville, finally, all of them, the gang, fast friends since college, rolling verse after verse deep into the night in a pledge to each other, until they'd all fallen asleep, humming and dreaming.

Joan gripped Barth tighter, making the excitement flow through her as well. “Yeah, you're probably right. I'm sure it'll be good."

"It'll be fantastic, Joanie! We'll meet Patty and Arthur at Pickles and make it a night of nights."

So they stopped at Antonio's and got supplies for the next day's expedition and returned to the zoo. New neighbours had moved into the lizard house, some weird goth couple from the music that was blaring out of there. Joan wondered how long they would last. She'd never liked the lizard house, for all her love of animals, but maybe the goths would appreciate the ultraviolet and the gloom.

The lizard house had never compared with the panda house. Since she was four, Joan had always loved it best. It had even been Barth's idea when they first talked about moving in together, that day the two of them had photographed the hippo washing in Rock Creek. It seemed proof of a city that granted all of them their heart's desires, and her, a soul-mate.

When they got back to the panda house in the late afternoon, Ling Ling had retreated behind the couch, and while Barth put the photo of the dodo up on the wall with all the other pictures, Joan tried to coax the panda out of her nest with stalks of bamboo. Barth opened a bottle of zinfandel, and halfway through it, Joan became convinced that Ling Ling would come out if they played ‘Pledging My Love.’ But Ling Ling wouldn't be persuaded.

They met up with the gang at Pickles to swap stories about their latest discoveries. Barth told the others about the Siberian tiger they'd glimpsed prowling the ground floor of Garfinkel's, Arthur talked about the phantom radio stations he'd been picking up and Patty complained about her latest girlfriends. Joan tried to join in, but she still felt a little disconnected, that same feeling that had made her go to Armitage in the first place. All through the Johnny Ace concert, she found her attention wandering, and anyway, the singer's baritone wasn't as smooth on stage as it was on record. But Joan didn't want to hurt Patty's feelings, so she kept quiet.

Don't be a spoilsport, Joan told herself as she and Barth stumbled back to the panda house. Barth lit some candles, and as they made love, she made herself remember how they'd met in the Natural History Museum which they used to haunt for years on their own. They'd bumped into each other under the huge blue whale that was suspended in the main hall, a spot that she'd first found after Patty and she had snuck away from the rest of the school trip. A personal talisman, the whale was like a promise to Joan that wonderful things would always remain out there for her. Tonight she imagined the blue whale swimming above the two of them, and the feeling of being so close to something so alive, something she wanted to embrace but was afraid to touch, almost made her cry. But with a single whip of its tail, the whale shot past and away from Barth and Joan, and they were left alone again in the aquamarine murk.

That night Joan dreamt, the clearest she'd dreamt for months. The animals in the pictures on the wall blinked, and peered forward, one at a time. At last a panda, or what looked like a man in a panda mask, drew out of the wall, and stood naked, looking down at her, before he took her hand and led her out of the zoo, along Connecticut Avenue where the flesh ghosts of dead Hollywood stars roamed, through somewhere else, streets she couldn't name. He took her across the city to a fine wooden door with a polished brass dragon knocker. He waited for her to come in. But Joan couldn't. It might be Georgetown, it might be across the Potomac in Old Alexandria. But she couldn't find the apartment, and Joan began to sob.

"What, babe?"

"Go back to sleep, Barth."

"Babe. Babe."

Barth's drowsy voice tapered into gentle breathing. Joan examined her old map of D.C., annotated with the faded colour of old Biros from a time when everyone thought a single plan could contain all the changes. Her own version of Armitage's map, she realized. On the desk by the lamp was a glass of what looked like tomato juice and the empty vial. She sipped from the glass, not sure if she liked the warm, salty taste. The warmth slipped down her throat, seemed to spread through her body, before it concentrated in an itchy hotness around her ankles.

Joan gasped, bending the Anglepoise lamp to illuminate her feet. On her left ankle, the veins stood out in a purple blueprint, irradiated like hot wires. She nearly cried out, but the heat was already fading, leaving a charcoal tattoo of criss-crossing lines and circles. With her thumb, she gingerly traced the markings, pressing down on the tiny bulls eye at the heart of the design. Then Joan understood, and she looked at her paper map and picked out the same lines.

She found the bulls eye: Georgetown.

When Joan was fifteen, Patty and she had gone on a Halloween dare to find the Georgetown house where The Exorcist had been filmed. As they stood on the stairs where the priest had thrown himself to his death to save Linda Blair, Patty had told her, It really happened, you know, but it wasn't this house, it was a few blocks away. After spending an hour wandering past the brownstones where rich lawyers lived, and the bars were filled with students, Patty finally presented the real place to Joan as a gift. She started telling true-life stories to scare Joan, but Joan wasn't listening. She was staring across the street, into a window flickering from the glow of a fireplace, imagining herself sitting with her husband on the rug, imagining herself going straight over and banging the dragon-headed knocker.

It was the same house. Joan tucked the map into her duffel as the man opened the door. Unlike the dream, he didn't wear a panda mask. He had kind brown eyes and a tanned face crinkled with some terrible experience she wanted him to confess and an apologetic way of standing with his shoulders tilted that reminded her of her childhood crush, Montgomery Clift.

"At last, dear."

And his voice had none of the exclamation points that had come to irritate her about Barth. “I've got the fire lit. Come in."

So Joan left Barth and the zoo behind. She was happy for a while with Derrick. But one morning early in the next spring, she woke up in the brass bed and gazed at the ceiling for hours.

She found Armitage again in the market. “Still don't know what you want, ma'am?"

She didn't reply. There was a price now, but it was so simple, Joan agreed without hesitation.

* * * *

Two years later, at Patty's insistence, the old gang got together one last time.

While they waited for the navigator, people quickly got bored. Patty tried to nuzzle her neck. Sparked by a lingering feeling for their affair that February, Joan thought about letting her, and anyway, this high up, approaching sunset, she could feel a chill and appreciated the familiar warmth. But her current lover, Cam, was pouting and Joan still saw the sweetness left in him, so she reluctantly pushed Patty away.

At last, Barth turned up—with his new woman, but without Arthur. This incensed Patty. “You went to the shop, right?"

"Where the shop was—yeah.” Barth was more interested in knotting hands with the woman than explaining. “The shop isn't there, it's been replaced with something selling weird fish. Arthur's gone."

So it had happened—one of them had finally strayed away. Joan wasn't surprised it was Arthur—he was always talking about tracking down that radio station whose signal only he ever seemed to pick up. But it was a shame. It had taken Patty months to organize this, weeks just to find where they'd all drifted to in the city. There was so much else to do now.

The navigator signalled it was time to go. As the silent man with a face like cracking ceramic helped them into the huge gondola, Joan glanced up at the tall cathedral that was casting longer and longer shadows across them. Was it an original thing? She tried to remember it from when she was a kid. Hadn't the cathedral been finished just before she went to college? If so, it had been unmade in the years since, with bubbles of grimy gothic statuary rippling across the clean stonework like buboes and a newly-jewelled surface creeping up the towers, more hide than building as it pulsated softly in the weak light.

The navigator stepped on last with the coiled end of the tether line. One of his men stoked the furnace, and the ropes and balloon fabric were pulled taut. The big-bellied balloon was the last of their shared dreams. The transparent material showed strips of sunset distorted by the hot air. Smaller goldfish inflatables rose up inside the balloon, and when they bunched against the inner surface at the top, Joan felt the balloon lurch upwards. She grabbed Cam's elbow, and despite his sulk, he steadied her as they climbed into the late summer afternoon.

Barth declared himself bartender and from behind the bar at the gondola's centre, began pouring drinks for everyone. His partner tried to help, but the absinthe bottle kept slipping as she tried to unscrew the cap with her paws, and everyone laughed.

As Cam cranked the stereo up, the others started to dance. The light evening breeze chilled with the increasing height. Holding onto one of the safety ropes, Joan leaned over the edge and enjoyed the vertigo.

Patty joined her. Joan smiled into her oldest friend's face, now Maori with the scarring of Armitage's services. “So what do you see?"

"The city. That's all I can see."

"Yeah, but which city. Do we see the same city?"

Did anyone anymore? Joan wondered at what point it had stopped being the same city for everyone. One by one, like Arthur, people were roaming off, peeling away from the common world. Joan imagined private cities sparkling with Jesus’ tears or razed by Armageddon fantasies, breaking off like bubbles, getting smaller as they floated away.

But Patty had never accepted that. So the two of them watched the city expand from the seed of the cathedral, into a spiralling vine of buildings, into street weeds that spread too fast for Joan to disentangle. Below the wind's faint keen, she heard a muezzin call and a blues guitar solo. Across the sun, flattening into the horizon in rolls of fat light, two large-winged things flew, probably condors, but Joan recalled the rumours of dragons and shuddered.

"What do you see?"

There was too much city to take in. What appeared to be a steel pyramid punctured the old zoo. The old ribbon of Rock Creek Park that used to divide the city had been healed by new scabs of moonscape. Strips of city were black with shared apocalyptic dreams. The Potomac looked like it had altered course again—the only thing Joan recognized there were the docked tall ships, waiting in vain for someone to leave the city. But no one would. Why should they? Everything they could possibly want was here.

"There's too much to see."

"Down there, Georgetown. Do you remember?"

But Georgetown was fizzing with too much detail—new monuments, a fireworks show, sudden wonders. “I can't."

"You must remember, Joan? Using our fake IDs in the bars? That Halloween? The Exorcist house?"

For a few seconds, Joan could. The outlines of Wisconsin Avenue appeared like a sudden profile in a magic-eye picture, and following it down to the corner of 18th, she imagined the McDonalds they always used to eat in, and then lower down, the canal that ran parallel to the river there.

"The college tower. The spire of that church, you know, the one we slept in that one night.” Patty pointed out each of the landmarks and as she spoke them, the city resolved itself, the detail collapsed into a single place they shared.

But then Joan saw the door with the strange knocker, and Derrick's sad face, sad when he took her in, just as sad when she slipped away four months later. She saw the cobbled streets, a long time later, when she and Harkness were betting on the white tigers that raced there, and some time after that, armed with rifles and hunting griffins, paired with a rag boy whose name she had deliberately never learned, and wallowing in a bloodlust she could never admit to before. And each time, she saw herself going back to Armitage, shivering at first, then tracing a new Georgetown on the map that spread across her skin.

Wisconsin faded like an old scar. “I just can't see it."

"I can.” Patty's partner had come up on the other side of her. “The tower. The church. I see it, Patty."

"I know you do, hon, but I want to see if Joan—"

Cam pulled Joan away from the other side. “Scratch me, I can't reach."

"Please, Joan, just look—"

Cam purred in that way Joan loved. “Maybe later, Patty.” She let him take her hands, sharp nails grazing the recent cuts on her knuckles. “Georgetown will always be—"

Knotting together on one of the cushions, Cam led her hand to the itch at the base of his spine. She stroked the fur there, reached down to tweak the stub of the tail she'd amputated. Opposite them, Patty continued to stare at Joan while her partner kissed her neck and gathered up her hands. Finally Patty gave in. She began necking with the woman, who was Joan's exact double. Joan thought Patty might have been crying, but her head was too hazy with drink to be sure.

The wind shifted, the gondola began to sway. For a while, the music got steadily louder until the wooden floor beneath Joan was twitching. Then suddenly the sound was cut off and everyone stopped dancing.

Belching, yawning, Barth announced. “Time for something new."

He turned on his koala woman accusingly. “Something new!"

Then he strapped on one of the parachute packs he'd brought, still howling. “New! New! New! New!—"

Barth's voice trailed away as he bailed out over what had once been Silver Spring. Someone shouted, someone else laughed, scrambling for the parachutes.

"Patty?"

But she was gone too. Only Cam remained, licking the spilt liquor on the bar counter, ignoring her.

"Where to?"

The stars overhead throbbed in time with Joan's head. She held a finger up to the navigator—just a minute—and fumbled in her purse for the vial. For a few seconds, she pressed it to her lips, sucking in its warmth, before she uncorked and emptied the tube. Just a minute. She would know what she wanted in just a minute, just as she always did.

But not this time. The liquid's heat dissipated and left her body cold.

"What do you see?” The navigator shook his head and whispered something in his assistant's ears. Joan pulled up her blouse, studied her wrists, got out a mirror to check her back. “Tell me! What do you see? What!"

She was covered from crown to toe by the same fine web of lines as before. Try as she might to focus, Joan couldn't spot anything new appearing on her body. For the first time in years, she felt empty. Desolate, she began to rock back and forth, heaving dry sobs.

* * * *

It took her some time, but Joan managed to track down Armitage's stall in the parking lot of the old RFK stadium, just north of the river. Since the disintegration of the Mall market, his stall had moved around the few common points left in the city, and clients could only find their way there by postcards tacked to their door at night by one of Armitage's army of mappers.

The air around the stall shook with sound of the stadium's never-ending concert. In the early days, it had alternated between a few groups—the Beatles, the Grateful Dead—but in the thick noise now, there must have been a thousand groups performing at once. Armitage was still wearing the Bon Jovi T-shirt and Joan wondered if they were playing inside as well.

"I drank the vial but nothing happened, I did what I always did, but it didn't work, it's not working anymore, it's—"

"That's because you're close to the edge."

She started breathing less heavily. “The edge of what?"

"Your heart.” Armitage picked some food from between his braces. “See, the first few times you use it, it's like a spotlight, you'll only see a few things. Someone new you fancy. Maybe a house you'd like to live in. But the more you use it, the more you get used to it, you start to see so much more. Only then can you see everything. You can see the shape of your whole heart."

"Please. I can't stand—I feel so empty."

"But are you ready, ma'am? Do you really want to know all you'll ever want?"

"Please—yes. Give it to me—yes. Yes."

"Good.” Armitage clapped his hands and his assistant, Twy, limped forward. Again Joan couldn't bring herself to look at the creature. “But to get what she wants, the princess has to kiss the frog."

"Kiss—you're joking."

Armitage looked away from her. “It's what I had to do."

"You did this too?"

He placed a paternal hand over Twy's head, actually caressed the thing's skin. “Trust me. It'll never hurt again."

Never hurt again. Joan repeated the words to herself as she closed her eyes and bent down to kiss Twy on the lips. Its touch was freezing, a numbness that spread like ice flowers from her mouth, down her neck, through her veins. By the time she opened her eyes again, the map lines had disappeared from the backs of her hands. They were gone all the way up her elbows, across her stomach, everywhere she could see.

Twy jerked back, coughed. Shivering at first, then wracked, the creature doubled up in agony and retched several times. Huddled over itself, its back starred with the needle points where Armitage had siphoned off blood for his customers. A thin snake of drool dripped towards the ground. Armitage reached down and tugged the line—not saliva, but a meaty length of string, still dangling from Twy's mouth. Its teeth worked furiously, spitting out the string as it backed away from Armitage in short hops, then in explosive exhalations of tangles, turning as it began to flee across the parking lot.

"Give Twy two hours, then follow the string."

Joan watched Twy scrabble across the top of a car. “The map's gone from my skin. I've got nothing to give you."

There had always been a price before: in exchange for the vials, Joan had to let Armitage copy out the new places forming on her body. As he did with all his clients, Armitage had carefully transferred the markings to his master-map. The layered paper was worn by notations and corrections, but stiff as a winding sheet with the glue solution that held it together. Stretched like a tent across the whole of the stall, it was so large there wasn't space for the other maps he'd kept.

"The only price is you promise you go through with it."

Armitage came close to her and began winding the string around her wrist. If she was all emptiness, he was all stone, solid, compacted.

Joan waited the two hours in a nearby small garden, where the wicker gazebo and the sound of robins held back the noise inside the stadium. Then she began following the line left by Twy, down alleyways, under bridges, through hallways, across vehicles and around trees. The city changed around her, abrupt twists in light and smell, but Joan refused to be distracted and only focused on the line, a shining crack that seemed to split the world.

Later—how much later she couldn't guess, except that she was tired and thirsty—Joan reached the end of the string. Horribly thin, its skin pulling between ribs with every breath, Twy sat on a kerbside, waiting.

This time, she forced herself to look at it, this thing of anti-desire. “Thank you."

Twy grunted, rolled painfully to its feet. Chewing slowly, it sucked up the string and gradually started to make its way back to Armitage. Only after it had disappeared around the corner of the brownstone edge of building did Joan look around.

She knew this place.

Opposite her was a small square, rusting monkey bars in the middle of a weedy patch, surrounded by apartments holding their breaths in cramped spaces. Hardly any light fell on the park and trash was clumped along the half-painted railings. But there was a tree, a grand, twisted, unstoppable chestnut that rose straight out of the middle of the square, its leaves turning the sky into something more fantastic than sky by dappling and shadow. Joan and her heart followed the tree up just as she had when she was a small child of four, catching that brief glimpse as her mother tugged her towards kindergarten.

Scraping on the street behind made her turn suddenly. A boy in a black corduroy jacket raced by on a beat-up Chopper, braking slightly to look back over his shoulder at her standing there dumbfounded. And yes, he still looked as cool and unattainable as when, in her early teens, she first saw him on TV.

On the radio somewhere, a Lemonheads song, “Different Drum,” only more immediate, as if Evan Dando was behind one of the windows, rehearsing.

In a shop window flaring with sunlight, the pair of crimson Doc Martens she'd stolen because she knew she couldn't save enough before they'd be gone.

Beside the shop, a front door with a dragon-headed knocker.

Yes—Joan knew this place. As she gazed around her, they came out to greet her: ten-year old Bobby, her cousin Ollie, her father, Frank the jock at high school, Calypso Jim, Evan Dando, Montgomery Clift, boys she'd only seen once, Barth, Derrick, the rag boy, all the others she could barely remember on down to Cam, all standing in the doorways and windows, smiling, welcoming her.

And the ones she didn't know yet—wild men and women, creatures, strangers who shocked her with recognition, people Joan could barely imagine now but knew that one day she would, would be drawn towards, a whole community, a new world, all mined out of her heart, waving, ready to wait their turn.

Everyone she would ever—everything she could ever—

Then she smelt it—a faint foulness, slightly stinging. And she heard it, like a roomful of TVs left on after the channels had gone to sleep. It drifted from behind the apartment buildings, so Joan finally began to move, stumbling as Twy had, in small convulsions that propelled her forward. The roar resolved into memory first, then something real. She was running, and ahead of her the road disappeared, tumbling into a horizon that turned into sand beneath her feet.

The horizon was a long way away, but she could still make out the magnificent plume of water breaking it, the water bursting as the huge tail divided the sea like a divine judgement. At the edge of the beach, a man with a reconstructed jug for a face was waiting by a longboat with his crew.

"It's the most beautiful thing in the world."

She was whispering, almost unable to breathe, but the captain heard her. “Yes, it is."

"Can I touch it?"

"Is that what you want?"

But Joan wondered why we always destroy the things we love. And immediately answered herself: because they can never satisfy us.

So she shook her head. He handed her the harpoon.

* * * *

She didn't know how long it lasted. Armitage did, but she never asked.

He did try to explain to her. “The thing is, once you find the edge of your heart, there's nowhere else to go, is there. And then all that's left is hunger."

Hunger. It's what had once made her shudder, scratching at hands, rubbing her eyes, the feeling of a huge hole inside that only got bigger the more she tried to fill it—but not anymore.

"Believe me, I know.” Armitage reached inside his vest pocket, touched his talisman. “You understand, I did get to Kansas eventually. But it wasn't enough. That's the point—it's never enough. So that's when I went looking for Twy. You look hard enough, you'll always find Twy. And Twy helped me find things I never realized I wanted. Twy showed me all the things I could possibly want. Least, until I ran out of them."

He was holding Kansas in his hand the way she'd held the matches, standing at the base of the chestnut. Eventually, worn out by the lack of longing, she'd started the fire with petrol siphoned from the gorgeous sea-green Bentley she'd seen in an airline magazine on her first trip to Europe. Her lovers had watched from their apartments until the reflection of the flames and the smoke obscured the glass.

"I just didn't want to be the only one."

She nodded. She couldn't forgive him, but she could at least understand, and that was all he needed.

So Armitage finally unfolded the winding sheet and showed her his work. She joined in with his helpers, the others like her, breaking up and setting out the stall, preparing the syringes for Twy, copying out the cravings from the skin of new customers, erasing streets, reapplying names, clarifying the city. Armitage had said there was nothing else to find, but he didn't really believe that—he couldn't, not if he wanted to carry on. He never said aloud, but she knew he believed that once everyone's appetites had been mapped out, once all possible terrains were made known, they would see the map's heart, the place in the city where all desire came from, their final hope of renewal.

It was a blank spot now, un-territory. Sometimes it took the shape of Kansas, sometimes the shape of a great fish, but she knew it was the shape of something she'd never be able to name.

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You Accept What You Get When You're Eating with Death

by Christien Gholson

Memory is an empty Greek restaurant on a Tuesday night. The cook and his brother, the lone waiter, are about to close when a group of five cousins walk through the door. The cousins haven't seen each other in years. They are all in town for a family reunion. They live in huge cities that have so many Greek restaurants they never bother to eat Greek. Now they desperately want Greek food and this is the only place they can find in the phone book.

They all have fantastically loud staccato laughter. It makes the waiter wince. He wants to go home, talk to his wife. Five years in the Midwest and listening to English all day still exhausts him. The cousins don't bother catching up on each other's lives. They've heard the news through the grapevine. One's recently divorced. The one who used to dance is now a nurse. One has a child graduating from high school. Some of them haven't seen each other since high school. The one who used to be so serious—always writing about loneliness, forgetting & Buddhist concepts of the void—her husband died in a car accident last year. Now she has no time to be serious. One's a raving alcoholic, though he thinks that part of his life has been kept a brilliant secret. Everyone else knows and doesn't care.

Instead, they tell jokes. They are telling death jokes. Which is appropriate because Death himself is sitting at the table with them, invisible as usual. It's not as heavy as you might think. None of them are going to die in the near future. It's just that Death loves Greek food. Especially dolmathes that have soaked in a tin of brine so long they taste like paint-thinner. He loves Greek food and good death jokes.

The cousins order saganaki because they want the waiter to come out and light the cheese, shouting “Oopah!” They want something as dramatic and absurd as telling death jokes while sitting next to Death himself. Death orders a whole bottle of retsina. He looks around the restaurant. Curling airline posters of Greece on the walls. Deep blue Aegean sea, clear skies. Tiny roads winding up a rocky hillside, lined with brilliant white stucco houses. Death laughs. It's the Greece you remember if you've never been there. The Acropolis. Ruins of Apollo's gorgeous body. Youths leaping over bull horns on the side of a vase. The cradle of a vacationing civilization.

It takes a long time for the food to arrive. The cousins don't notice the time. They're with Death and he doesn't wear a watch. After seven cigarettes by the back dumpster, the waiter comes out with the saganaki. They watch him fumble with his lighter, his fingers stained yellow from years of rolling a blend of Turkish tobacco. He smells of nicotine. He snaps the lighter four times before it ignites. He mutters a tired “oopah” as he lights the cheese. No emotion. A bored monotone. As if he is responding to his brother's endless nagging about his smoking with his usual “whatever"—the only English word he finds useful. The flame dies before he puts the platter on the table. He shrugs, walks off. Dead silence from the cousins. They look at one another, raising eyebrows, tilting their heads, smiling dumb-founded. Before the waiter even hits the kitchen door, Death and the cousins burst out laughing. It was the best joke of the night! Everyone at the table is exhilarated. The waiter didn't fake a thing! He didn't even try!

The cousins love the waiter. The waiter hates the cousins. Death drinks his retsina and looks around, content. He likes the place. It's the kind of place that really just wants to go sit outside on the front steps, watch traffic at the end of the day. Like a grandmother who's finished washing all the clean windows in her daughter's house. Her grand-daughter finds her on the stoop, puts her small head in the old woman's lap. The old woman strokes the girl's hair. Time begins ticking for the girl. Time stops for the old woman. Her hand smells of washrags and pickles.

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The Mushroom Duchess by Deborah Roggie

The Dowager Duchess of Turing had made a lifetime's study of mushrooms. It was an odd occupation, perhaps, for one of her age and station in life; but even Duchesses must have their little hobbies, and fungal botany was hers. Her nurse, many years ago, had piqued her interest in mycology by teaching her what mushroom lore she'd known, and the Duchess supplemented that with field study and close questioning of peasant women, whenever her duties allowed.

Mushrooms are funny things. They can please or poison, cause flying dreams, or wake a sleeping man with a bellyache. One type of mushroom grows as large as a village, spreading stealthily underground until one damp morning, after a heavy storm perhaps, a ring of pale toadstools springs up to mark its boundaries. Some glow, some emit the foulest odors, and some develop so quickly that a patient observer can see them sprout, extend their gray umbrellas to the sun, and disappear, all in a single day.

So, in between hosting formal receptions and supervising the servants, the Duchess studied the most arcane mushrooms she could find. She tracked down one unusually tough, acidic variety of mushroom cap, which, worn internally, prevented conception. And she discovered a rare morel that could impregnate a woman. (Regrettably, she found, the children resulting from such pregnancies were severely impaired.) Her studies turned up species of toadstools that inhibited certain brain functions: speech, for example, or sight.

A particular spotted tree-mushroom, when harvested in autumn and used within two days, caused permanent memory loss. A nondescript puffball, dried, powdered, and added to saffron broth, gave the user the power of understanding animals’ speech. However, as an unfortunate side effect, the subject lost all ability to communicate with humans.

The Duchess was careful and systematic when testing the properties of various mushrooms. She recorded the age of the specimen, its weight and condition, the dosage administered, the phase of the moon, and the species of her subject. The bulk of her experiments were done on animals, but as they were limited in their ability to communicate their experiences, eventually the Duchess turned to human subjects. In twenty-seven years of tests, she had lost only two maids, a groom, and a stable boy. A scullion or two had gone quite mad, and a footman had committed suicide, but she was quite sure that no one connected her to their unfortunate fates.

She was unaware that in the immediate neighborhood “taking tea with the Duchess” had become synonymous with risky behavior.

Her husband, the Duke of Turing, had had mixed luck. He had lived for quite a number of years after succumbing to an overdose of greenblanket chanterelles; the Duchess told everyone he'd had a stroke, and saw that he had the best of care. He wanted for nothing except health and mobility.

Once he was decently buried, the Dowager Duchess turned to the problem of her son's marriage. Eldred presented no opposition: he quite depended on his mother. It was finding the girl that provided the challenge. In time she found a suitable daughter-in-law who would be decorative and obedient, and who seemed likely to produce an heir. The dowry was negotiated, the bloodlines investigated, the girl inspected, and the contracts signed. Their wedding was splendid, as befit a son and heir of the ducal house of Turing.

But the Duchess was still unsatisfied.

Perhaps no one girl could have appeased her. Eldred seemed happy enough in his animal way. His bride was everything that her parents had advertised.

Yet there was something wrong with Gracinet, of that the Duchess was sure. She puzzled over it as she took her bath, as she ordered new bed hangings, as she fussed over her lap dog. She worried about it while receiving guests and while shortening guest lists afterwards. It nagged at her as she sat in her private workroom and sorted and labeled new specimens of dried porcini and ink-caps obtained from foreign markets. And then, as if one of her more troublesome powders had suddenly dissolved because at last the tea was at just the right temperature, the problem became clear.

Gracinet was decidedly bookish, her conversations filled with literary allusions. The Duchess overlooked her quoting Soltari over breakfast. She smiled tolerantly when her daughter-in-law declared that Eldred's manner was right out of The Voyage of the Sun.

But during the annual Hunters’ Banquet, when Gracinet compared her husband to the mysterious Durial of the Brinnelid and Eldred grunted, “Who? Never heard of him,” in front of the most cultured people of Turing, the Duchess decided she'd had enough. No wife of Eldred (who had never met a book he liked) must be allowed to put him in so bad a light. Of course the mother of her future grandsons should be intelligent, the Duchess thought, but she should also have the grace not to show it. From that moment the Duchess was convinced that her daughter-in-law must be stopped from asserting her superiority over them all.

"My dear child, you look poorly,” said the Duchess to her daughter-in-law some few days later.

"It's just my monthlies, Your Grace,” said the girl apologetically. The Duchess smiled and tapped her on the arm.

"I have just the thing. You sit right here and I'll make you a bit of my special tonic."

"Are you sure? I don't want to put you to any trouble."

The Duchess assumed her warmest manner. “Now, Gracinet, my dear, there's no need for you to suffer every month. You're my daughter now, and your health is important to me.” And off she bustled, quickly locating the packet she had made up for this occasion, and calling for a maid to heat water for tea.

Gracinet, being new to Turing, saw no reason to excuse herself from having tea with the Duchess. She was uncomfortably aware that her mother-in-law did not like her. Why, she could not fathom; and her husband was no help on that score, for when Gracinet had asked him how she might have displeased the Duchess, he'd said, “Gracious! Don't get on her bad side, whatever you do! That's all I need!"

She was finding this wife business both difficult and rather boring. Her husband had little use for her outside of the bedroom. His mother ran the household and brooked no interference. The Duchess's ladies were older women who loved to gossip and shake their heads over the follies of the young. Noting their mistress's aversion to her daughter-in-law, they followed Gracinet with pitying eyes but did not befriend her. It was unfortunate that she had no little hobby, such as that of her mother-in-law, to amuse her. Gracinet supposed that things would change when she became a mother, and produced children of her own to care for.

In the meantime, she read, embroidered, and offered literary conversation at mealtimes.

The Duchess returned with a steaming cup.

"Drink it up directly, my dear,” she said. “Monthly tea is best drunk hot."

Gracinet obediently complied. It was mild-tasting, faintly bitter, with a woodnut flavor. “I'm beginning to feel better already,” she murmured as the warmth eased her aching belly and thighs.

"Let's keep this between ourselves, dear,” the Duchess said. “This tea is terribly expensive, and I don't want every woman in Turing coming to me for a cup each month."

Gracinet promised. “You're so kind to me,” she said.

The Duchess merely stroked her daughter-in-law's forehead and took the empty cup away.

From that point on, Gracinet gratefully drank the monthly tea provided by the Duchess. She suffered no more monthly discomforts: no cramps, or bloating, or exhaustion, or irritability. But it was around this time that she began to feel more isolated than ever. For whatever she said, whatever opinion she offered, she was bound to be either contradicted or ignored.

If Gracinet were to say, “My, it's cool out today,” someone would be sure to glare at her and snap, “It's unseasonably warm."

If she said, “Can I help with that?” the reply was invariably, “I doubt it."

If someone's spectacles were missing, and Gracinet said, “I saw them on the hall table,” she was simply ignored.

Not only the intimates of the ducal circle responded to her in this way. Servants scorned her and refused her requests. Strangers, even, found whatever Gracinet said to be worthless. The only kindness in her life was that her mother-in-law unfailingly prepared, month-in and month-out, that cup of monthly tea.

As a result, Gracinet grew shy and anxious, saying less and less. She wished she could not mind so much, being dismissed and cut down at every turn. She wished she were brave. She wished that she could shout out a blazing fury of words that could not be ignored. Was there anything she could say that wouldn't be wrong? Any phrase, any formula that was safe?

Eventually silence became her only defense. If she said nothing, she would not be cut down. Tall and pale, Gracinet receded to the background of every gathering. She withdrew from public life. She was terrified of becoming pregnant and raising children who would treat her every utterance as wrong. Her husband installed a mistress at the other end of the house; Gracinet dared not protest.

The Duchess was pleased with the results of her experiment. The bearded toadstool, the active ingredient in her monthly teas, fascinated her with its ability to provoke unpleasant responses to Gracinet's every word. There was a complex mechanism at work here, well worth study. She had never before worked with a mushroom that affected the interaction between a subject and those around her. Despite her foreknowledge, the Duchess saw her own reactions affected. Even when she could see the spectacles on the hall table, she felt a revulsion at hearing the facts stated by Gracinet. It was a relief when the girl began to keep her mouth shut.

True, if the girl never spoke it was impossible to measure the effects of different dosages. But there were other fungi to study. She had recently heard of the tawny ink-cap, which, when well-rotted and tawny no more, yielded an ink that compelled the writer to record only the truth. She longed to test it on her steward, whom she suspected of amassing a small fortune at her expense. She readied a page in her journal to be devoted to the steward's case. Science would not be denied.

For Gracinet, the silent days and months piled one upon the other, adding up to silent years. Over time, she felt insubstantial, corroded by cowardice, worm-eaten by words she dared not express. Even then she found no dignity in keeping silent, for she became a figure of derision—her speechlessness made her an easy target. Some equated her silence with stupidity.

The Duchess made no effort to correct this notion.

Gracinet sought consolation in books. The library became her refuge. When she was quite sure she was alone, she read aloud to hear the sound of her own voice, even if she limited herself to others’ words. She found that certain forms of literature lent itself to this kind of treatment. She read aloud Bakinjar's Sermons, Linnek's Letters from Doriven Prison, and the epic Tale of the Abbess of Pim. On her daily solitary walks she whispered the Blackwater Sonnets. She gave voice to Soltari's Ice Comedies and to the Tragedies of Irsan the Younger, trying out different accents on different parts. Anyone overhearing her would conclude that she was quite mad, but the reverse was true: Gracinet was fighting to stay sane.

* * * *

One hot and humid afternoon while in the library, Gracinet found the obscure book for which she had been looking, and settled on the floor by the bookcase to read. That is why, when they entered the room, the two gentlemen did not see her. She remained as she was, hidden in the shadow of the jutting bookcase, hoping that they would quickly select a book and leave; but, to her horror, one stationed himself on the sofa in the middle of the room while the other roamed about, taking down likely books, flipping the pages, putting them back in the wrong places.

"Are you looking for anything in particular?” said the voice from the sofa.

"Not really. Just something to amuse me while I'm here.” He snapped another book closed. Gracinet imagined the cloud of dust that resulted: the library shelves were seldom attended to. Sure enough, the man sneezed.

"Don't you find the people amusing enough?"

"What, His Grace and that lot? Hardly. This is probably the dullest house in Turing."

"Oh, come now,” said the voice from the sofa, “it's not all that bad. The Duke's lively enough, once you get him out of the house and away from his mother. Not a bad sort, really."

"I met his mistress. Gives herself airs. I'm surprised he never married."

"Oh, weren't you introduced to the wife? I guess they didn't trot her out for the occasion. Rumor has it she's an idiot. I couldn't tell, myself. They say her family covered it up until after the wedding.” Gracinet felt her stomach knot. She knew what was said about her.

"And the old lady stood for it? I shouldn't think she was the kind to allow that sort of thing."

"Ah, the Dowager Duchess must have had her reasons. She always does. Notice how nothing happens around here without her say-so? How the Duke defers to his mother in the least little thing? If the Duchess said ‘Marry this stick,’ you can bet he'd have done it."

"But why?"

The restless fellow joined his companion on the sofa, who lowered his voice. “The Dowager keeps ‘em all in line. The old Duke, too, before he died."

"I don't quite follow your meaning."

"Well, I daren't be more plain. Just, whatever you do, don't have tea with the old lady."

"Are you serious?"

"On my life, I am. There've been some mighty peculiar tea-parties in this house. She's famous for them. Notorious is more like it. Tea with unusual ingredients, if you know what I mean. If you're invited to one, make an excuse, invent a dead grandmother, a summons to the king, anything at all, and get out."

"Why has no one put a stop to it?"

"Well, nothing's proven. Perhaps that footman who thought he became a snake after sundown was already going mad. It happens. And that maid with the three bouts of temporary blindness for no known reason? Coincidence. Maybe the story about the two stable boys is just an ugly rumor. But I'd be careful, just the same."

His companion laughed nervously. “Indeed I will."

Gracinet had heard enough. She rose and stepped out from behind the sheltering bookcase, startling the two men on the sofa considerably. They gaped as she swept by them without a word. Whatever would they make of her now? At any rate, she supposed, they were unlikely to stay for dinner.

She had to think. Her feet took her down the hall, down the long staircase, and out onto a familiar garden path, without her conscious mind registering the fact. She had to tease apart the facts, like the matted hair of the Duchess's odious little lap dog. Gracinet had no doubt that the monthly tea did more than ease cramps. What a fool she'd been! The maid, apparently, was not the only one who had been blind. If only she'd listened, if only she'd observed! There were years of onlys weighing upon her.

Her retreat, her aloofness, had been her undoing. And she had collaborated in her own silencing. She had hidden; she had cringed.

"It's not me,” she said aloud, and realized that she was alone in the shady grove past the kitchen gardens. It was cooler here, and the young trees around her seemed like companions. “It's not me,” she told them. “It was her. All along it was her.” Gracinet found she was shaking, and tears streaked her face. The trees stood silent and still in the face of her storm. “'Drink it up, dear.’ Oh, I could choke her on her own brew!” Grief for the lost years surged up and overwhelmed her; Gracinet sank to the ground and wept.

When the tears had stopped and her face felt like a wrung-out washcloth, she bent to clean the twigs and leaves clinging to her dress, and considered what to do next. I'll pretend to drink the tea, she thought, and see if its effects wear off. But I won't let the Duchess know. It will be better if she thinks I am not a threat. Then perhaps I can find a way to stop her.

She glanced at the house, bright in the sunlight beyond the trees, with its many windows blindly glittering. Oh, yes, thought Gracinet. She must be stopped.

* * * *

She didn't know just when the feeling began, but the Duchess sensed, somehow, that she was being watched. A footfall in an empty corridor, an open window she was sure she'd latched, an unlocked door ... Perhaps it was just age, she thought. Perhaps she was forgetting things. Perhaps there was a mushroom out there that would sharpen memory. She would have to check her notes.

It was an unproductive time for her researches. A recent shipment of rare specimens had been water-damaged—slimy with mold and completely unusable. Her agent had apologized profusely. And her new steward had inexplicably lost the latest shipment. Drat the man! She was surrounded by incompetents. These delays would retard her investigation into a truffle that caused people—even those with the most perfect pitch—to sing off-key. It quite spoilt her temper.

Even her daughter-in-law seemed different, though she was as silent and retiring as ever. But the last time she'd brought Gracinet her monthly tea, she'd noticed an almost imperceptible nod from one of her ladies. Later one of them touched Gracinet on the shoulder when they thought she wasn't looking. And Gracinet had smiled. She wondered briefly if her daughter-in-law was quite as isolated as she'd seemed. But the Duchess shrugged off her misgivings.

One morning soon afterwards, she discovered that someone had been in her workroom. The polished brass scales, a gift from her late husband, were out of balance. Her notes, though neatly stacked, were out of order. And, at her feet, a single bearded toadstool lay delicately on the carpet. She picked it up and held it in her cupped palm as if it were the head of a newborn infant; and, examining it, considered her options.

That afternoon, the Dowager Duchess found herself alone in her parlor with Gracinet. While she caught up on some correspondence, she glanced every now and then at the younger woman reading by the window. Her daughter-in-law had changed in some way, although the Duchess could not put a finger on how, exactly. A watchfulness, a sense that she waited for something. Even her posture seemed straighter.

The Duchess approached Gracinet and looked over her shoulder at the book she was reading. It was the Abbess of Pim, the scene where the foster-son imagined burning down the abbey.

"...beams burned away, and charred stone left monument to bitter days.

A hundred years of wind and rain could not scour this wretched place,"

she read aloud. “I feel that way about this old house sometimes, with all its old memories and misdeeds. What a dreadful thought! Do you ever feel that way?"

"Sometimes,” said Gracinet without thinking; then her eyes widened, and she turned to face the Duchess.

Not only had her daughter-in-law spoken, but the Duchess felt no revulsion, no urge to contradict. In that moment the she knew Gracinet had stopped drinking the tea. Her scientist's mind wondered how long it had taken for the effects to wear off, and if there would be any residual symptoms. They stared at each other, each seeing the other clearly for the first time: the pale-haired disciple of science, and the newly determined daughter of literature—each surprised to find the other unmasked at last.

Gracinet tucked her chin toward her chest, like a horse about to throw its weight into pulling a heavy load, and continued the quote:

"But I and all my sons to come through all the days and nights unnumbered will remember wrongs done here, here in the broken house of Pim, though it sink beneath the waves and come to rest in dark waters the silent home of scuttling crabs..."

"Well, then—” the Duchess began, but was interrupted by the entrance of a group of ladies and gentlemen, guests of Duke Eldred, who had come to the parlor to set up a card party. Frustrated, the Duchess was forced to play hostess; Gracinet left unnoticed in the commotion.

As soon as she could manage it, the Duchess took her son aside. “Really, your wife is getting more and more strange,” she said. “Her behavior has become highly unsuitable. I must talk to you about her."

"After dinner, mother,” said the Duke, pulling out his pocket watch and consulting it.

"But—” He snapped the gold watch case closed so abruptly she jumped.

"Our guests, mother, require my attention, and yours. Now is not the time. Worley, man! Let me introduce you to my mother.... “And the Duchess had no choice but to comply with a smile.

* * * *

The bell rang for dinner. Duke Eldred offered his arm to the Dowager Duchess, and together they led their guests to the dining room. A pair of footmen opened the double doors wide, and the company filed in.

Beneath their startled gazes a riot of mushrooms spilled out of bowls set among the elegant place settings and along the sideboard. They filled crystal glasses, swam in glass compotes, swarmed over silver dishes, overran great platters, tumbled over salad plates and were piled high in a great vase like froth. The elegant dinner service hosted colonies of spotted toadstools and ink-caps of many colors, tiny button mushrooms and the giant termite heap mushroom, puffballs of many sizes, stinkhorns, death caps, and porcini, oyster mushrooms and morels, pink trumpets, white truffles, and black ones, too. The Duchess knew many of them—from the arched earthstar to the bird's nest fungus, the elfin saddle to the slippery jack—as well as she knew the shape of her own hands. They were like cities accumulated by a traveler, marks of where she'd been and the journey yet to come.

"What is the meaning of this—this outrageous display?” said the Duchess in a deep voice that promised terrible consequences and made all there, including her son, flinch.

"It means that it is time you listened to me,” said Gracinet.

The Duchess looked up to see her daughter-in-law standing at the far end of the room. The young woman held one of the Duchess's own private journals, and Gracinet opened it and read out loud in a voice that was steady and clear:

"The dosage seems to be key, for when I first administered greenblanket chanterelles to my husband, his stomach rejected them immediately, and he suffered no long term ill effects. But, convincing him that it was the wine that was bad that night, on another occasion I persuaded him to try the dish again; however, I gave him too few; and he merely suffered a fit of apoplexy. I must remember to take into account variations in the weight of the subject when working up the correct dosage. He was of the strongest constitution, and it took careful management to keep him from making a complete recovery. (That, in itself, yielded interesting results, see below.) I finally got the dosage right on the third attempt, some years later."

The Duchess looked about during this recitation, ignoring the shocked and hardening expressions of her guests. She felt distant from them all, as if they were located at the wrong end of a telescope. She noted that the missing shipment of mushrooms must have contributed to the display before her. Well, she mused, she should have demanded a written explanation from this steward, too. She had grown lax. Her glance fell upon a small, covered tureen on the table before her. The Duke, seeing where her attention was fixed, reached forward and removed the lid, to reveal a steaming stew of greenblanket chanterelles. “This is how my father liked them prepared, no?"

The Duchess said nothing.

Her son smashed the lid on the floor so hard it scarred the floorboards before shattering into a thousand porcelain shards. The ladies were protected by their long skirts, but several gentlemen's legs were nicked right through their stockings. “Answer me!"

"Yes,” said the Duchess.

* * * *

The Dowager Duchess of Turing had hoped to contribute her notes and specimens to science, but it was not be. It fell to Gracinet to oversee the destruction of a lifetime's work: the private museum of mycology, the journals and drawings and fungal powders.

Gracinet glanced through the journals before she consigned them to the flames. There she learned that bitter buttons caused hair to grow in unseemly places, and that oil of ghostgall, if rubbed on the blade of a murder weapon, prevented future hauntings. After a number of such entries, she shuddered and closed the book. It would not do to peer so closely into her mother-in-law's mind. It was time to concentrate on the future. Though the mistress was not yet out of the house, Gracinet had begun to reconcile with her husband. They were reading Soltari's Ice Comedies together.

The Dowager Duchess was confined to an upstairs bedroom, and watched day and night. But no one volunteered to share her meals, and no one offered her tea.

Gracinet came to regret her willed ignorance. When they burned the papers and scores of carefully labeled packets of dried mushrooms out by the kitchen garden, two of the gardeners overseeing the bonfire died, and a third became deathly ill from the smoke. He never made a full recovery: ever after he supposed that the bees were plotting against him, and had to give up gardening work altogether. It seemed the Duchess had managed one last experiment after all.

[Back to Table of Contents]

Daylighting the Donwell River by Alette J. Willis

Simon trudged along the strip of construction debris that cut a swath through the dense Toronto neighborhood of Dandale. Heaps of asphalt marked where the river daylighting project bisected residential roads, and steel struts and rotted timbers jutted out of the torn ground where buildings had once stood. The wasteland was supposed to become a clear running stream, overhung by weeping willows and lined with wildflowers—at least it had looked that way in the ad which had sold him on the condo that backed onto this mess.

* * * *

He'd seen the ad while he still lived with his now ex-wife Sheila in the house she had picked and decorated, in the suburb she believed to be the most up-and-coming. The Toronto Sun had run a piece about the plans the City had to resurrect the long-buried Donwell River. Sheila had brandished the article at him, launching into a tirade about governments wasting her hard-earned money on frivolous projects.

Simon hadn't said anything; he rather liked the idea but he knew better than to contradict Sheila. He stared at the page and nodded noncommittally, which is when the ad had caught his eye. It showed children sailing a paper boat down a tranquil stream—the view the lucky condo-dweller would have from his balcony.

As Sheila ranted on, Simon wondered whether you were allowed to be nostalgic at thirty. He supposed you were if you'd woken one day and found yourself boxed into someone else's fantasy of an adult life. Somewhere in the contrast between the ad and Sheila's litany of complaints, he came to a decision.

"I want a divorce,” he said, cutting into her monologue.

The startled silence was so welcome it seemed golden to his ears.

"Yes,” she said, finally. “I think that's best. But I get to keep the house. You've never suited it anyway. An executive townhome is no place for an under-achiever like you."

* * * *

Simon kicked a Coke can into the trench. It landed with a splash in an oily puddle. His choice of a new life wasn't looking inspired at the moment. Bad as it was, though, he didn't miss his old one.

He headed upstream—if there had been a stream—past the nineteenth century warehouses that were his immediate neighbors, and behind several blocks of Victorian workers’ cottages. A chill March wind blew towards him and he was beginning to tire by the time he caught site of a brand-new bridge up ahead, its iron spans curlicued incongruously over the cracked mud and garbage of the riverbed. A graffiti artist had spray-painted a huge, Chinese-style sea monster in blue and silver along the retaining wall. Its long tail coiled around a flight of stairs leading up to the busy commercial street above.

The tantalizing smell of coffee drifted towards him. Simon followed it up the stairs, across the bridge, and into the warm, moist micro-climate of a small café that abutted the river-to-be.

The place was ancient. The gold paint on the elaborate tin ceiling had flaked off in places and thousands of patrons had worn a trail in the linoleum from the door to the glass display cases mounded with pastries. Even the cash register was old and ornate. The only thing that looked new was a small watercolor in a pine frame, propped on a shelf above the cash register. It showed the interior of the café but the far wall—currently windowless—had been replaced by a bank of glass which opened onto a patio overlooking the river.

A large, balding, aproned man, standing in front of an impressive array of steam-spewing brass machines, asked if he could be of service. No menu was in evidence, so Simon assumed he was supposed to know what to ask for. He ordered a frappucino.

"Where do you think you are? The mall?” the man asked. “We serve proper coffee here, not overpriced milk shakes.” He muttered something and walked away.

"Never mind my Tony,” a dark-haired woman with caramel skin called from the back where she was wiping down an empty table. “How about a bowl of café au lait?"

Simon nodded, embarrassed, and looked around, but none of the other patrons had noticed the fuss.

"Find yourself a seat. I'll bring it over,” the woman said, slipping behind the counter.

A couple of lanky teenaged girls, completely engrossed in an intense discussion had the prime seats by the front window. Next to them, a little old man was being remonstrated in Greek by his matronly wife. The only other customer sat apart, fiddling with a clothespin and a spool of thread. Feathers, candy-bar wrappers, and tufts of grey hair were scattered across her table. Curious, Simon took a seat nearby.

As good as her word, the proprietor brought him a steaming bowl of café au lait, dusted with cinnamon and accompanied by a pair of biscotti on a plate. Up close, he realized she was younger than he had first thought, not more than forty. He thanked her and was rewarded with an easy smile that swept right up into her warm brown eyes—lighting up a face that might otherwise have been considered plain. It made Simon feel special, welcomed. Sheila had always been miserly with her smiles, pasting them on only when absolutely necessary.

"I'm Simon,” he said, on impulse, extending his hand and half-rising out of his seat.

She laughed and shook it.

"Maria,” she said. “Just give me a shout if you need anything else."

He watched her thread her way towards the counter, perfectly at ease with her surroundings. She stepped behind the pastry case and he found himself staring straight at Tony. The older man glowered at him.

The woman at the next table was still preoccupied. Simon watched her over the rim of his bowl. She wore slim black trousers with a tailored pale-blue trenchcoat. Her fine hair, which hung around her face, obscuring it from view, was such a pale shade of blonde it was almost silver. She pushed it behind her ears and he choked on his coffee. She was gorgeous, the kind of beauty you just didn't see in real life. Her skin was luminous, her cheekbones high, her eyes the color of a still pond reflecting a summer sky. In short, she possessed the kind of beauty that inspired even lowly computer programmers, like Simon, to poetry.

She took a sip of mineral water and gazed past him, giving Simon a dose of reality. She was also the kind of woman who would never even give him the time of day.

An earring-sized wire hook was clamped between the jaws of the clothespin in her hand. She cut some quills off a pavement-colored feather, bound them onto the wire with a couple of wraps of thread, and bit off the end with her small white teeth. To this she added a tiny snow-white feather and a bit of silver paper. When finished, the earring resembled some sort of high-tech flying insect.

She stood abruptly, swept the remaining objects into her coat pocket, strode over to the counter and dropped the earring into the wastepaper basket.

"This one isn't going to work either?” Maria asked, ringing up the bill.

The woman shook her head, paid, and left. But she didn't go far. Simon watched through the window as she whipped out her scissors, crouched down and snipped at something that lay next to the curb.

Overwhelmed by curiosity, Simon downed the rest of his coffee and headed for the counter. Maria wouldn't let him pay for the biscotti, calling it a welcoming gift. He wondered how she knew he'd just moved in, but didn't want to prolong the conversation. As soon as she turned away, he plucked the little insect from the garbage, pricking his finger on its barbed hook. It wasn't an earring after all but a fishing lure.

He dropped it into his wallet and pushed out into the cold spring day. The woman had disappeared, but lying on the road in front of the café was the flattened carcass of a black squirrel, its tail stripped of fur.

* * * *

During the week, work on the Donwell resumed. Trucks descended upon the neighborhood and carted away debris, then crews in hard hats moved in, digging out a rough pathway and planting trees. Simon set out for the café again the following Saturday in a mood of happy anticipation despite the drizzling rain.

There was only one other customer in the café: the mystery woman. She was dripping wet, literally. Rivulets streamed from the coil of her hair and the fabric of her clothing, forming a puddle beneath her chair. Simon shivered and wrapped his hands around the bowl of café au lait Maria had brought him, grateful for its heat. The woman paid him no attention, intent as she was on tying red and blue feathers onto a tiny hook.

Where the previous fly had been dark and foreboding, the colorful feathers made this one festive. Still, the woman peered at it, frowned, and left it with some money on the table.

Simon wondered whether it would be too obvious if he followed her out. Lightning flashed as the door closed behind her, thunder quick on its tail, and then the rain came down in earnest, dancing on the pavement and sending up small fountains of spray. Instead of running for cover, the woman threw back her head, extended her arms and spun around and around, her coat flapping open. Lightning burst again, burning an image of wet T-shirt and erect nipples into Simon's retinas. He swallowed hard.

"I do believe you've taken a fancy to our would-be Donwell River Madonna,” Maria said behind him.

Simon turned towards her.

"Do you want this one, too?” She asked, holding the fly between thumb and forefinger. “It's less gloomy than the others. Must be the rain."

She dropped it on the table in front of him. Simon glanced out the window, but the woman had gone.

"Why'd you call her that?” he asked.

"When you've lived in a place long enough you get to know who the Madonnas are. This one's new. She's been in here every weekend since work started on the river, but I never saw her before then."

She laid her hand on his arm. “Madonnas are best contemplated from afar. If they take notice of people at all, it's only to make use of them. I would hate to see you get hurt."

She collected the money the Madonna had left and headed for the cash register.

Simon ran a finger across the blue feathers of the lure. Maria meant well, but he resented her advice just the same. He was curious about the Madonna, that was all.

He wrapped the fly in a napkin and wandered over towards Maria.

"Can I take a closer look at that picture?” he asked, nodding up at the water-color as he handed her a ten-dollar bill.

"You'll have to come around and get it yourself,” she replied. “I can't reach it."

Simon stepped between the pastry cabinet and the row of coffee machines and lifted down the painting. He was immediately struck by how much the delicate colors mirrored those in the condo ad.

"Who painted this?” he asked, laying it down.

"The Madonna,” said Maria, giving him his change.

"So she does more than tie flies?"

Maria shrugged. “She wants Tony to build the patio."

"There's you,” Simon gestured to a woman in an apron leaning on one of the tables in just the same way Maria leaned against the counter now.

She shifted closer to him and peered at the painting. Her hair smelled good, like dark roasted coffee and cinnamon, and he could feel the warmth radiating from her body.

"It does look like me. I never noticed,” she said. “And that's you I'm talking to."

Her arm brushed against his as she pointed to a man with mousy-brown hair wearing a golf shirt and khakis.

"Lots of guys look like that."

"Not around here,” Maria said.

"It couldn't be me. She painted that before I even knew about this place."

Tony came out of the back room. Simon straightened up, his face flushing red.

"What's he doing behind the counter?” Tony asked.

"He wanted to see the painting of the patio you refuse to build me. He's got a great appreciation for the arts,” Maria said, winking at Simon.

Tony snorted and waved a floured hand at the painting. “That's not art. Its just a dream you let that girl put in your head. Can you hear a river running outside?"

"So, when the river comes will I get my patio?” asked Maria.

The argument seemed like an old one. Simon excused himself and walked out into the dwindling rain. He half expected to see the Madonna poking sticks down sewer grates but the only people in sight were an old couple leaning into each other under a beat-up umbrella.

As he stepped onto the bridge he heard a noise beneath his feet. The rainwater had gathered into a small stream, barely more than a trickle, which burbled self-importantly down the middle of the riverbed.

* * * *

The following Saturday the spring sun coaxed most of Dandale out, and there were few tables left by the time Simon got to the café. Tony made some snide remark about synthetic coffees but Maria waved him away and brought Simon his café au lait and a chocolate-covered biscotti. In deference to the warmer weather she wore a knee-length fitted brown skirt with a gold paisley print and a short-sleeved blouse. He wondered what Tony had done to deserve someone like Maria.

He munched on biscotti and watched the Madonna, who was sitting perfectly still, hands folded before her, staring at the windowless wall. There'd been bad news about the daylighting project, which probably explained her lack of interest in the pile of feathers on the table. Work on the Donwell was exceeding its budget and a group of City Councilors had managed to put through a resolution stopping any further construction.

Simon licked the tip of his finger and ran it around his plate to pick up the last few crumbs. He looked over at the Madonna again and found himself gazing into the icy pools of her eyes. The air slowly seeped out of his lungs but he couldn't seem to look away. Just when he thought he might drown, something slipped between them, blocking her from view.

He gasped for breath, blinked, and realised that he was staring at the backside of Maria's well-fitted skirt. She turned towards him, the Madonna's empty water bottle in her hand.

"Is there anything else I can do for you?” she asked.

"No,” he managed to say, wondering what she must think of him leering at the Madonna like that.

Maria leaned over to collect his biscotti plate, and he caught a glimpse of caramel cleavage, which only served to embarrass him more. Silver flashed at the edge of his vision, and he heard a faint snip. He dared glance over at the Madonna, but she was engrossed in knotting thread around a hook and didn't look up.

"If you change your mind, you know where to find me,” said Maria, and walked away.

The Madonna held up the finished lure and a shaft of sunlight caught it, making it glitter. This week's creation was a fuzzy gold and brown housefly and Simon thought it was by far the nicest she'd made to date. She slipped it into her pocket, deposited money on the table, and strode out the door.

Simon lurched to his feet, slid a ten dollar bill under his bowl and hurried after her. It was too much money, but he couldn't wait for change. This might be the lure the Madonna had been waiting for, and he had to know what she would do with it.

As the door closed behind him he heard Maria call his name, but the Madonna was descending the stairs and he had to follow.

He reached the riverbed in time to see her disappear around a bend, far upstream. Dropping all caution he began to jog. The riverbed curved around and he found himself in a park that surrounded a shallow crater, crisscrossed with thick pipes—the would-be source of the Donwell River. The Madonna was nowhere in sight.

The sun had baked the bottom of the pond into hardpan and fissures, and a turtle the size of a dinner-plate sprawled there, its pink mouth hanging open. Simon wondered where the creature had come from and how long turtles could survive without water. This one looked parched.

He considered taking it home with him. It could live in his bathtub until the city finally flooded the river, if they ever did. He reached down to pick it up but it snapped at him and he recoiled.

"Quite right,” he said. “A turtle would be miserable in a bathtub."

It crawled over to a well-rusted pipe, clawed feebly at it, and collapsed.

"Hang on a minute,” he said, searching for a suitable chunk of rock.

With a resounding clang, he smashed a piece of granite against the pipe. Too resounding. What he was doing probably constituted vandalism. He glanced around but no one was in sight. With his next blow, he hit the pipe closer to the ground, letting the mud dampen the sound.

He'd meant to make a small hole to give the turtle something to drink, but on the fifth impact the weakened metal split open and a fountain of water sprang up, soaking Simon to his knees.

He dropped the rock and ran.

Panic carried him as far as the bridge, at which point he decided that running would only draw attention to himself. He paused to catch his breath and the water overtook him. Anxiety was replaced with an unexpected surge of pride. It was barely two feet wide, but today it was his stream.

If there was a bit more of a skip to his stride as he followed his fledgling stream home, no one witnessed it. The only people he passed were a young boy and girl, and they were too absorbed in floating a newspaper boat over pebble rapids to pay attention to passers-by.

That night he dreamt he was underwater trying to catch the Madonna who swam like a fish, farther and farther ahead of him, undulating in her tight black pants and thin blue T-shirt, and trailing the gold and brown lure behind her.

* * * *

The small stream inspired a flurry of donations. By Wednesday the daylighting project was in the black; by Thursday the work-stoppage had been reversed; and by Saturday crews had laid down a proper stone-dust path and dumped truckloads of topsoil on either side of it. Nature joined in, dusting the willows with green buds. Simon could have sworn they'd been nothing more than saplings a couple of weeks ago, but today, as he walked to the café, they swept up over his head. One of the abandoned warehouses sported a new sign, advertising lofts with a river view, illustrated in a familiar style, showing a fisherman in hip-waders standing in the middle of the water.

The café buzzed with the anticipation of summer, and Maria was wiping down the only vacant table, which happened to be next to the Madonna's. When she saw him, she pulled out a chair and patted its back. Simon sat down, feeling guilty for running off the week before.

"The usual?” Maria asked, without her customary smile.

He nodded, wondering if she was mad at him. He was only curious about the Madonna, he reminded himself, nothing more. Besides, Maria was married, so why should she care?

The Madonna had exchanged muted colors for a thin red sweater that hugged her curves and plunged at the neckline. An assortment of feathers, fur, and thread lay before her, which she stared at, frowning.

With a sudden gesture of dismissal, she swept everything off the table and onto the floor. Whipping out a pair of scissors she snipped at the collar of her sweater, and pulled away a bit of wool. Blood beaded on her pale skin. She looked up, past Simon, towards the invisible river beyond, grasped a lock of her hair and hacked it off. Working a thread loose from the waist-band of her black trousers, she unraveled a fair length, and cut it off.

Moving surely, snipping and wrapping and knotting, she made a body of red for the fly and tied a soft halo of silver hair around it with the black thread. After a cursory inspection, she thrust it into her trouser pocket and rose smoothly to her feet.

Before his conscious mind had a chance to stop him, Simon leapt up, sending his wrought iron chair crashing over backwards.

"Let me be the fish you're trying to catch,” he blurted out, and immediately regretted it.

She pushed passed him as if he were no more than an obstacle to be negotiated, dropped an envelope and some money by the cash, and left.

Painfully aware that every eye in the place was fixed on him, he righted his chair and retreated to the counter.

Maria was examining the envelope, which had her name written across it in a flowing script. She glanced up at him eyebrow raised, and his heart sank further. But he must have appeared as pathetic as he felt because her stern expression began to crinkle at the edges. She poured a fresh cup of coffee and spiked it with a bottle from beneath the counter.

"Frangelico, to mend a broken heart,” she said passing it to him with a smile.

He took a long swig.

"My heart wasn't in any risk of being broken,” he said to no-one in particular.

Maria's smile widened and he suspected she might be laughing at him.

She leaned across the counter and whispered, “A man can do a lot more with a warm-blooded woman than he can do pining after a silver-haired Madonna."

Her words mixed with the Frangelico in his belly in a most inappropriate way, spreading a tingling heat into parts of his body that it seemed were best left ignored. Blocking those feelings absorbed most of his attention, leaving him at a loss for conversation.

"What did the Madonna leave you?” he asked, finally.

"I have no idea,” Maria replied, slitting open the envelope.

The cozy brown housefly tumbled out.

"That's the lure she tied last Saturday....” Simon trailed off, feeling guilty again.

He picked up the fly and examined it.

"The gold and the brown, it's some kind of fabric,” he said, handing it to Maria.

To his surprise, her face drained of color, and then flushed deep burgundy.

"This is the fly that got you racing after the Madonna last Saturday?” she asked.

He nodded.

"Do you know what she made this out of?” she asked him.

"No."

"It's made from a piece of the paisley skirt my niece, Tony's oldest, gave me. I noticed a nick in it after she left last Saturday. And look, the little legs are made out of hair the same color as—"

"Tony's your brother?” Simon interrupted.

"Of course. What did you think?"

Simon just shook his head. He watched Maria's hands move as she talked. No ring.

She was trying to tell him something about the fly but he began to panic that he'd make as much of a fool out of himself with her as he had with the Madonna, so he excused himself and walked home, more confused than ever.

* * * *

Simon opened his eyes. The faintest pre-dawn light outlined his window blind. What had woken him? Was someone in the condo? He listened for an intruder, but all sounds were washed out by a dull throb from outside. The river!

Simon leapt out of bed, raced down the hall, crossed the living room, and flung open the door to the balcony. The night air chilled his bare skin but the undulating surface of the river mesmerized him. He wondered whether Maria knew that the Donwell had finally been freed.

Leaving the door open so the full roar of the river could fill his apartment, Simon returned to the bedroom. He pulled on random pieces of clothing from the laundry pile, grabbed his jacket, then descended the stairs, two at a time, and ran out into the twilight.

The willow's branches, weighed down by freshly unfurled leaves, trailed in the current. Simon knelt beside the tree and dipped his hand into the water. Cold bit at his fingers but he kept them submerged, feeling the river push at him like a living thing.

He stood and wiped his hand on his jeans. No lights were visible in any of the apartment buildings or houses, but instead of returning sensibly to his own bed, Simon headed upstream. He got as far as the abandoned warehouse, when a figure emerged out of the shadows, striding towards him. He recognized the red blur of the woman's sweater and the pale glow of her silver hair. The Madonna. She was carrying a fishing rod and a net hung from her belt. Before their paths could cross, she turned aside, walking straight into the river.

"Hey,” he yelled, running to the water's edge. “Come back. It's too dangerous. You don't know how deep it is."

He thought he heard her laugh, but it might have only been the rush and splash of the river.

When the water reached mid-thigh she stopped and began to pay out the gossamer line. With a snap of her wrist, she lifted it into the air. Turning slowly, she flicked it in arcs above her head, and Simon had to duck as the fly came speeding towards him. Once she was facing upstream she let the line float gently down. After a few minutes she cast her fly to another spot, nearer to shore.

Simon kept pace with her as she waded further upstream with each flip and cast. They had almost reached the bridge when the tip of her pole dipped. She leaned back, raising the rod up to perpendicular. The line zipped towards the far shore and grew slack. She reeled it in until it was taut, paused, then reeled it in some more. A large silver head emerged at her thighs. Trapping the rod beneath her arm, she unclipped the net and scooped it under the fish.

The creature fought his captivity, sending spray high into the brightening sky as the Madonna pried open his mouth and released the hook. She grabbed him firmly with both hands, letting the rod and net slip away.

The huge fish thrashed, but her grip was true. She lifted him up and kissed him, long and hard, full on his fishy mouth. The sun broke over the horizon, shooting a shaft of light between two buildings to illuminate the pair. In the sudden glare, the Madonna vanished and two fish fell, with a splash, into the river.

Simon waded in, staring at the place where she had last stood, wondering if he had lost his mind. The monster fish broke the surface just in front of him. Startled, he stumbled back, landing in a patch of cattails. Another, slimmer fish leapt shining out into daylight, turned in midair, and followed the first downstream.

With their passing, the roar in his ears subsided to a gentle gurgle and he could hear the songbirds raising their voices in the morning choir.

The fishing rod had snagged in some water lilies a few feet away. He didn't think the plants had been there ten minutes earlier, but after what he'd just seen, he supposed anything was possible. He waded over to retrieve the rod. The mauled fly still dangled from the end of its line.

"Planning on catching something?” a familiar voice called from across the river.

Maria leaned against the brick wall of the café, awash in golden sunrise.

"I wouldn't want to catch anything in this river,” he said, tossing the fishing gear onto the ground behind him.

"You shouldn't judge others by their choice in Prince Charmings,” she replied.

"So you saw it too?"

Maria being there the whole time grounded the Madonna's transformation solidly in reality. She nodded and began to pick her way down the steep slope.

"It would appear that Madonnas require audiences,” she said. “Fortunately, Tony's agreed to the patio, as long as we can get a deal on stones, and can coax friends and family into helping out. So people will be able to sit out here all summer long and admire her work."

Simon realized he was on the wrong side of the river and began to wade across. The water didn't seem nearly so cold as before.

"I'd be interested in helping out,” he said. “That is, if you'd like me to."

He'd intended it to sound casual but Maria didn't answer right away, leaving the words hanging in the air between them, gathering nuance. The water reached his waist, and the strong current threatened his balance. And then he was through the deepest part and he knew that Maria's silence also contained meaning.

As he approached the shore, she reached out a hand. He grabbed it and scrambled up the loose bank onto solid ground. The fuzzy housefly hung on a gold chain around her neck, and it brushed the top of her cleavage as she drew a deep breath.

"You're sopping wet,” Maria said, smiling, his hand still firmly gripped in hers. “Come up to the café and I'll make you a hot cup of coffee."

[Back to Table of Contents]

Native Spinsters by Diana Pharaoh Francis

...and William Osbourne shot his sixth tiger in as many months, and the jamadars ran before the elephants all the way from camp, lauding his victory in quite a ferocious manner. I shot nothing and was forced to trail behind in disgrace.

* * * *

Fanny paused, her eyes gritty. She scanned again the brief missive she'd begun drafting three hours before. It said nothing of any consequence. But how did one broach such a subject as she must do?

A dozen crumpled sheets of parchment littered her desk and the floor beneath, giving mute testimony to her many false starts. She eyed the jerky handwriting on the letter before her, wanting to crumple it as well, wanting not to have to write anything at all, wanting to erase the last day entirely. She closed her eyes. If only Caroline Hughes had had more strength of character—But no, she had been raised to fall by a father who had forgotten all about duty and honor.

Fanny opened her eyes and shook her head, dipping her pen in the well. She sat poised, searching for the words that seemed immensely inadequate. She glanced at the open doorway where the aide-de-camp tapped his toe, staring down his nose at her tailors lining the corridor walls. She bent back over her page.

Dearest sister, I come at last to the close of this letter, for the packet sails tonight and George says there won't be another for a month. However, I must venture one more thing, though I do not even know how to enter into the subject, except to dive right in without fear of consequence.

Previously, both Emily and I have written recommending to you Miss Hughes. But something has occurred which has convinced me that you must not, on any account, receive her. Forgive my mysteriousness, but I have no time to explain more. All I can offer is that she really is not one of us, and you simply must not allow her entrance to Bowood.

Your fondest sister,

Fanny

Barrackpore, 1838

Fanny set aside the quill. Did it say enough? It must. She blotted the letter, blotching her signature as she did. She frowned at the smear. There was no help for it, she decided wearily, hearing the aide-de-camp rocking impatiently onto his heels.

She folded the paper, creasing the edges and sealing the flap with a dollop of green wax. She bore down on her seal with unnecessary force and the F surrounded by willow leaves distorted with the pressure. The hovering young man returned the slight smile she gave him with a curt nod and spun out into the passageway. He tripped over the tailors who sat cross-legged with yards of green Chinese silk pooling about them, sewing on Fanny's gown for Mrs. Thoby Prinsep's ball. He spoke sharply at them in unintelligible Hindustani and then strode off down the corridor.

Fanny retreated to the window, wishing for a breath of fresh, cool air. The sun was sinking, but it made no difference to the heat and humidity. The brilliant oranges and reds bled through the limp mosquito netting swathing the wide opening, putting a feverish blush on the room. In that unguarded moment, the unwanted memory grabbed at her again, She cowered to the floor, clutching her arms around herself. Choked, groaning sounds emanated from between her stiff, white lips. Behind her the punkah swished, pulled by a young man in a turban who carefully pretended he wasn't there, though he rolled his eyes at the peculiar behavior of the English memsahib.

The memory seeped away. Fanny willed herself to get up before someone in the hall noticed her weakness. Oh, but to have doors on her room so that she could shut out the stuffy, bustling aides-de-camp and the chattering tailors!

Please God, let the letter be in time!

Letters had such a habit of going astray, of lying forgotten in a customs house or in a pile of government correspondence.

She really is not one of us.

How could Eleanor begin to understand the depth of her warning? Even if Fanny had acquainted her with the story....

But no. She could never tell Eleanor, nor anyone else.

She really is not one of us.

Because she was—

Was not—

Not even—

The words still wouldn't come. She couldn't bear to think them, not even for a moment. She wouldn't think them. She would not remember.

Oh, how Fanny hated India!

* * * *

"We are to take a drive to a bit of ruins they say is quite lovely and sketchable,” Fanny informed her elder sister Emily, who reclined on a chaise, her skin doughy, her usually snapping eyes sunken and dull. “Some of George's men discovered it hidden in a lovely little valley. It appears we shall be the first visitors to it for many years."

"I don't think so, dearest,” replied Emily in a faded voice. “I cannot seem to shake off this dullness. I shall read the latest by Boz and drink that dreadful concoction Dr. Drummond left for me. You might take poor Miss Hughes. She has been at such loose ends since her father passed. And the packet to take her home won't come for a few more days at least. She's really quite pleasant and quiet."

A fleeting frown sharpened Fanny's expression. To spend an entire day with Caroline Hughes? How deadly! After a moment, however, she smoothed away the frown and bent to give her invalid sister a smile and a kiss on the cheek.

"Of course, Emily. The poor thing has suffered tremendously. Perhaps a drive might help her recover her spirits."

"Oh, sister dear. Do not attempt to conceal the truth of your feelings from me. I know she grates your nerves. But really, she has no other friends and she has had such a hard time of it, what with Colonel Hughes having gone native after his wife died. It's a miracle she turned out as well as she did.” Emily's voice sparked with her natural vehemence, momentarily driving away her lethargy.

"But she is so dreadfully serious and meek. I know there are those who say the same about us—but really, we cannot even begin to compare!"

Emily nodded, her graying hair glinting in the light.

"Which is why we must take every effort to influence Miss Hughes. It is our duty as sisters of the Governor General, and as British ladies. If she is to succeed in society, she simply cannot be such a wet lump. And we have very little time left to exert our powers, though certainly Eleanor will take her in hand once she arrives in England. It comforts me to know that, though Eleanor certainly has her hands full with the children. I cannot imagine what Basil Hughes was thinking to let his mistress—a native woman at that—have the care of his daughter."

"I believe the woman was his wife's ayah. I suppose it is natural he turned to her for solace, alone as he was with a young daughter. You know how this country works against a person. I can't believe we haven't been driven stark raving mad ourselves."

Emily snorted. “You cannot possibly believe that is any excuse. And look what has become of poor Miss Hughes. She can hardly manage herself at the dinner table, and as for dancing or intelligent conversation—why if that man were alive, I'd tear a strip off his back. He should have sent his daughter to England for a proper upbringing post haste after his wife died."

Fanny smiled, pleased to see healthy color blooming in Emily's face. A good dispute was just the thing to put her back in spirits.

Emily paused, comprehension dawning. “You, dear sister, are incorrigible. I will never believe a word you say again.” She sat back against her pillows, her eyes snapping. Fanny's smile widened.

"Forgive me, dearest Emily; I will endeavor to behave better. I shall even take Miss Hughes on my outing."

Now it was Emily's turn to triumph. “I expect you will have done wonders for her. Now you'd better be off to bed. The packet shall arrive the day after tomorrow, and there is a reception tomorrow evening for Ranjit Singh's deputation. You have just the day to work your miracle on Caroline Hughes."

* * * *

Fanny elected to use a horse cart rather than the usual camels. No doubt Miss Hughes was perfectly capable on camelback, raised in the manner she had been. But she had such a mousy, timid way to her that Fanny doubted whether the other woman could be counted on to manage herself if anything untoward should occur. Camels being such nervous darlings with uncertain tempers—Fanny thought it better not to put Miss Hughes’ temperament to the test.

At precisely 5:30 A.M. the following morning, Fanny arrived in the main foyer of the Barrackpore residence, trailed by her two jamadars. Miss Hughes was already waiting, sitting so demurely in a corner that Fanny nearly overlooked her.

The other woman's face appeared worn, her dull brown eyes shadowed underneath and her cheeks colorless. Her hair was a dull black and did nothing to set off her washed-out complexion. In England, Fanny knew, Miss Hughes would undoubtedly recover a rosy color, and her oval face and straight nose held the promise of beauty. But she had little hope that the other woman would ever discover a spirit that would make her dark eyes crackle. No, she was doomed to be a wallflower. A wet lump indeed.

"Shall we go, my dear?” Fanny said crisply, gesturing for Miss Hughes to accompany her as she strode out into the courtyard. “It will be quite hot soon and we shall wish to be at our destination before the day becomes too unbearable. The reception doesn't begin until after nine, so we should return in relative comfort. I've had a basket of food and drink prepared and we shall fare very well indeed. Do you have your lap-desk? Oh, yes, by the door.” Fanny pointed it out to Ahimsa, the senior of her two jamadars. He retrieved the wooden box and placed it in the cart's boot with Fanny's desk and the basket of provisions.

"Mr. MacNaghten insists that we have four outriders attend us,” she said to Miss Hughes, filling the silence as best she could. “But he has given us permission to leave behind our personal servants. With such fierce guardians, I can't imagine anyone would dare look twice at us."

Indeed the Sepoy riders were quite ferocious, with great hooking swords held by gaudily embroidered red sashes, wearing high black boots and gold earrings. Their turbans shadowed their faces, making them appear vaguely demonic. Fanny smiled at the nearest one, repressing a shiver, and told the driver to begin.

It was a tiresome journey. The two ladies’ conversation proceeded in painful fits and starts, generally petering out as Miss Hughes mumbled diffidently into her chest.

She'll never make anything of herself if she keeps this up, Fanny thought, not very sympathetically. It is a British woman's obligation in India to provide companionship to one another, to help keep the boredom at bay. At the very least, she could attempt to keep the little boats I set to sea afloat!

At last they came to the ruins. The place was quite old and long deserted. Tumbled buildings were set in six concentric circles, nestled in a cove of the hills. A hot spring fed masses of purple and yellow flowering vines swathing the dirty marble, which had once been pink. At the center of the ruins was a domed building shouldering above the rest. Trees and bushes had tangled with the vines, nearly shrouding it from view. Only the curving top gleamed in the sun.

The site was much lovelier than Fanny had imagined and she smiled at Miss Hughes her delight. The other woman smiled back, a genuine smile of appreciation and camaraderie, and Fanny felt warmer toward her.

Fanny signaled the driver to stop and stepped down, extending a hand to aid her companion. Miss Hugh's hands were fine as a bird's body and they seemed to have hardly any strength. The two women collected their desks and Fanny motioned for one of the Sepoys to follow after with the basket. He turned red and shook his head, saying something in Hindustani. Fanny frowned, not understanding. Not for the first time she wished she had a head for languages. But it wouldn't have mattered. Not in India. The heat and the thick air sapped a person's energy, her motivation and focus. In England she might have learned Hindustani, but here—Fanny sometimes found it difficult to remember her own name.

"Do you understand him at all?” she asked Miss Hughes.

Miss Hughes shook her head, the straw bonnet she'd tied on making her look like a turtle hiding in its shell. “It's a very different dialect than I'm used to, and ... and I was never so good at Hindustani.” She said it apologetically, looking away.

Fanny snorted. As if not knowing the language was anything to apologize for. Perhaps that native woman had inflicted less damage than she'd thought. There might be something to salvage after all. Eleanor might just be the one to accomplish such a feat, if she could juggle such a colossal task with the demands of her husband and the half-dozen of Fanny's beloved nephews and nieces.

The Sepoy spoke again, shaking his head vehemently and stabbing his finger at the ruins. He seemed very passionate.

"Well, it appears that he doesn't want to go inside. That poses no difficulty for me. How about you?” Mr. MacNaghten would be incensed, but a spot of privacy was just the thing she wanted.

"Help me with the basket. We'll leave it in the shade by the pool here and come back for it when we're hungry. Do you wish to rest a bit? Or would you rather have a ramble and find a spot to sketch?” she asked Miss Hughes.

The other woman was wilting like an English daisy in the heat and Fanny firmed her shoulders, expecting that they would be resting. But Miss Hughes surprised her.

"I'd like to walk about a bit. It's really quite lovely here and the birdsong is so beautiful with the chuckling of the water."

Fanny flashed a delighted smile and took the other woman's arm affectionately.

"Let's begin at once."

They wandered slowly through the outer buildings, proceeding in a long spiral. They spoke little, exclaiming over flowers and opal-winged insects, brilliantly plumed birds, and the lovely buildings that had been. Round and round they went, through each of the circles, one after the other.

The outer buildings appeared to have been storage rooms. They lacked windows or evidence of furniture or cooking places. The next circle showed more signs of habitation, each edifice having two windows and a fireplace, sconces along the walls for lights, and the remnants of looms, paintbrushes, and other materials. The buildings had probably been workshops, Fanny decided. She imagined that some were schoolrooms where sloe-eyed apprentices had learned crafts, their fingers nimble and deft. The next three circles were domiciles, growing progressively larger and more opulent as they neared the central building. The innermost of the three had inlaid silver and lapis walls in wonderful designs, and varnished canvas floors which remained curiously untouched by the ravages of the damp and the heat. Wide slabs of stone jutting from the walls indicated where the people had slept.

Fanny counted six buildings in the last circle. These were larger than all the rest, and yet were dwarfed by the domed center structure. She gazed up at it. Sweat dampened the undersides of her arms and trickled down her back, soaking the fabric along her ribs. Her face was flushed and her legs felt thick and ungainly beneath her long skirts. The long walk had left her mouth dry and her tongue swollen. She breathed deeply of the heavily scented air, trying to clear her suddenly foggy senses.

But the odors overwhelmed her with their cloying voluptuousness. Their flavors exploded in her mouth: sweet and spicy, savory and sour, acid and ice. Her head spun. It was as though someone had poured thick honey over her. The feeling runneled slowly over her shoulders and down over chest. She felt a quivering tingle begin in her breasts, an alien warmth that she had never before experienced. Then the feeling continued its descent. It slid tenderly over her ribs, smoothing intimately over her stomach and buttocks and further: down to the crux of her femininity.

Fanny gasped and then heaved a choked sigh as honey-hot fingers caressed her, spreading between her thighs, pushing and gliding, viscous and liquid. The pleasure was indescribable. Terrifying and heavenly. Her swollen breasts swayed with every sobbing breath. Her knees buckled as she lost all sense of herself, all dominion of her limbs. She landed on the flower-swathed ground, her legs bent beneath her. Still those fingers pursued her, tracing the contours of her femininity, shaping, stroking, weaving, urging.

There came a moment of such spasming pain, of such clawing ecstasy, that Fanny lost all sense of herself. A wave of blackness washed over her and she floated away into velvet darkness.

She had no idea how long she was insensible. She came to herself on her back, her legs bent to one side and aching with cramps. She moaned and pushed herself up, her hands shaking, the crushed flowers she lay on radiating a sickening miasma of perfume.

Fanny forced herself to her feet. She clutched at a crumbling wall for support. Of what had come before—she thrust the memory of it away, refusing to consider it. She refused think of the way she continued to throb down there, how her nipples tightened in response to her shifting underclothes, as if too sensitive now for the touch of silk. Her face burned, even as an unaccountable longing to unbutton her dress and peel away the offending clothing and expose herself to the hot, moist air, surged up and wrapped her around. She clasped her hands together tightly.

"No, no, no,” she whispered. “I cannot! We must leave here at once. Before—” She broke off, unwilling to think what she might do next. But she felt something looming before her, a danger, a dark door beckoning, welcoming her inside, tempting her to—fear clamped down on her like teeth.

Fanny glanced around. “Miss Hughes?” She made an effort to speak firmly.

"Miss Hughes. Caroline?"

The only answer was the distant yip of jackals, the rustle of leaves and the twitter of birds. Fanny clasped her arms around her stomach and gazed about her in indecisive silence. What had happened to Miss Hughes? Had she gone for help when Fanny had fainted? Or had something stolen her away?

There was a sound from inside the central building. Fanny's shoulders jerked and she stared up at the edifice, dread balling in her stomach. Something deep down, something instinctual and feral, wanted her to flee. Her legs twitched with the imperative and she fought it. She could not leave Miss Hughes. Nor would she give in to fanciful missishness. She was thirty-nine years old, for goodness sake.

She straightened, drew a deep breath, and strode up the overgrown path of the central building and into its dark recesses.

"Miss Hughes! Caroline! Are you there?"

Fanny paused in the gaping archway. The span rose high above her head like a hungry mouth. Inside, the air was murky and warm. Within the confines of the space she heard more sounds, running water and something else. Movement—perhaps footsteps? She glanced over her shoulder, but could see nothing of the Sepoy escorts or the horse cart. Her stomach twisted. Then she faced back around, took a brisk, bracing breath, and stepped inside.

She found herself in an open chamber that seemed to encompass most of the dome. Above her head, the vaulted stone roof glowed ruddy as the midday sun illuminated the exposed topmost curves of the dome.

Fanny paused, blinking, as her eyes adjusted to the gloom. None of the detritus that had accumulated in the other buildings encroached here. The floors, paved in polished pink marble, looked as if they had been swept clean only moments before, and the walls were clear of moss and mildew. At the center of the room was a pool with concentric steps leading down into its depths. The bottom of the pool went from pink to crimson at the center, where a fountain bubbled from a statue. Fanny could not make out its shape. Arched recesses lined the walls like dark, staring eyes, and there were a number of long, wide benches set in widely spaced ring halfway between the walls and the fountain.

Fanny made her way forward through the ring of benches, her mouth dry. She wanted a drink badly. Her footsteps made little sound on the smooth floor as she approached and knelt down. She scooped a handful of the water into her cupped hands and then cried out, shaking her hands. The water was hot.

Disappointed, she stood and walked around the edges of the pool. She squinted at the statue from which the water ran, pausing when at last she began to make it out, her mouth falling open.

"Wonderful, isn't it?"

Fanny spun around, clutching her skirts in white-knuckled fists.

"Why didn't you answer when I called? Are you all right? What on earth—?"

The last trailed away as she drew closer to Miss Hughes, who reclined on one of the circling benches, her form shrouded in rosy shadows. Miss Hughes sprawled with feline ease, naked, her long hair pulled loose from its coif. She lifted her head onto her elbow, eyeing Fanny from beneath heavy-lidded eyes, one hand trailing down between her legs. She laughed, a throaty, sated sound.

Fanny stared, aghast.

Miss Hughes drew a deep breath of the heavily scented air and sat up, stretching and yawning, her rosy-tipped breasts pointed and full, her lips red and glistening.

"Come, join me,” she invited. She stepped next to Fanny who flinched away. Miss Hughes touched her forefinger to Fanny's dry lower lip and rubbed it back and forth. Fanny drew her chin back.

"This place is for you, you know. For all women. Breathe deeply, open yourself to the joy of it.” Swift as a snake, she bent forward and pressed shining lips against Fanny's mouth, her tongue darting inside, tasting. Before Fanny could do more than stiffen, Miss Hughes stepped away, smiling as she ran her hands down over her breasts and ribs. “Feel it, Fanny. It is wonderful."

With that she walked to the pool, stepping into the water. Fanny watched, her mouth gaping. The water rose around Miss Hughes’ slim buttocks as she went deeper into the center of the pool. It swallowed her hips and reached up to lick at the undersides of her breasts. The locks of her hair spread out around her like black snakes twisting in the pool's current. Miss Hughes circled the statue at the center of the pool, disappearing behind it. It was three-sided, each side consisting of a woman with four arms and oversized genitalia from which gurgled water. Fanny covered her mouth with a trembling hand.

Miss Hughes spoke again, still hidden, her disembodied voice echoing from the dome.

"It has been many years since a woman has come here. They thought it sinful. Sent Asuras in the bodies of men to sanctify it, and took my Bhaktas away and made them slaves. Such avidya—ignorance. I do not hate them. The wheel turns. And turns again. I am always, forever, and never-ending, whatever the face I wear."

Fanny trembled and swallowed. Her throat was too dry to speak, and the soft, deft touch of Miss Hughes’ kiss still lingered on her tongue. Again she felt that warm honey feeling, gliding, pressing, smoothing, swelling. Again she collapsed to her knees as the dreadful pleasure seized her and drained her strength. She moaned as the spasms shook her. Sweat drenched her; she had no strength to move.

Long moments passed. Water dripped onto her forehead and she flinched, gazing up fearfully. Miss Hughes stood over her, her skin flushed red from the heat of the pool, her long black hair clinging wetly to her skin.

"My gift is potent. Through the ages, many have sought my font for the power I grant them.” She knelt, her knees splayed so that Fanny could see the other woman's most secret, intimate cleft. Fanny blushed painfully and forced her head away.

"Ah, as this one, you are kanya. You fear my gift because it is strange.” Miss Hughes laid hot, damp fingers on Fanny's brow and forced her face back around. Fanny jerked back, but could not pull away from the determined touch. Miss Hughes shifted her hands so that she held Fanny's face wedged between her palms, bending low so that that their breath tangled together.

"You will come to know me, to serve me. The first of many who will renew my temple with their joy and passion. My Bhaktas do not service men—you will remain kanya and you will celebrate my touch alone. You shall help me fill the temple again, and in each face you will see my face, and in each hand you will feel my hand, and in each kiss you will feel my kiss. Together, my Bhaktas celebrate the life I give, the joy I bring. There will be a symphony of delight that will shake the walls. This,” she pressed her palm against Fanny, “this is only a hint of what will be.” She lifted her hand. The palm was red. A ruby mist coalesced above it, and then formed into the image of two female figures twined together in a passionate embrace. As Fanny watched in nauseated fascination, a corona blossomed around them. Tinged every color of the rainbow, it rippled and danced, crackling and hot.

Panic swept Fanny and she shook her head. She would not—This, this creature, whatever it was, could not make her! She jerked from the other woman's grasp and scrambled to her feet, stumbling away.

"Stay away from me!"

Miss Hughes closed her hand and followed after, a frown marring her brows.

"I am Shakti. You do not refuse me in my own house."

"Of course I refuse. As any decent woman would. What have you done to Miss Hughes?” Fanny stepped blindly backwards, her heart pounding, and not only from fear.

"I have offered her my blessing, as I have you. And she has accepted, with gratitude and longing. But ... you do not."

"No! Do you know who I am? I am Frances Mary Eden, a British lady and the sister of the Governor General. This is—intolerable! I demand that you remove yourself from Miss Hughes at once and let us leave in peace. She cannot have understood what you would make of her."

Fanny's voice had regained its strength, though her hands and legs shook.

"But of course she understood. Did I not answer her desires exactly? Did I not deliver her from fear and despair and grant her a life of power and bliss?"

Miss Hughes paused, head tilting, eyes narrowing, her lips curving in a suddenly menacing smile. They were near the door of the temple, Miss Hughes pursuing as Fanny continued to retreat. The arched opening framed Fanny in white sunlight. Opposite her, Miss Hughes stood, legs set apart, her long, wet hair clinging to her pale skin, cocooning her in a tenebrous veil. She glanced above her at the blushing dome, her countenance considering, as if hearing a spectral voice.

"But perhaps another's gift will satisfy better. Power and bliss of a different sort.” She faced back to Fanny, and this time her smile was more than dangerous. It was absolutely perilous.

"And She desires very much to meet you...."

Fear streaked along Fanny's nerves and her stomach twisted. When next Miss Hughes spoke, her voice had changed from sultry heat to chill calculation.

"It would seem that you came here not to worship at Shakti's feet. When she felt your breath and smelled your lush ripeness, she rejoiced.” Miss Hughes shook her head regretfully. “Shakti is generous and loving, but her time is not yet come again."

Fanny opened her mouth to ask who? But no sound emerged. Instead, as she watched, Miss Hughes reached for the crumpled white lawn dress she'd been wearing. The dress fit awkwardly, as if the shape of Miss Hughes’ body had changed. She gathered her hair and twisted it around her head, pinning it in place with a filigree comb that Fanny didn't remember ever seeing before.

Miss Hughes came to stand beside Fanny, her pale cheeks rosy, her lips red and full. She was beautiful, like the deadly edge of a finely wrought sword. Fanny shivered.

"Who—?” she croaked at last, unable to produce any greater sound.

The creature looked at Fanny and her eyes seemed like infinite wells. Fanny's stomach twisted tighter and bile rose sour in her throat.

"The wheel turns. And turns again. I am always, forever, and never-ending,” Caroline Hughes said. “I wear many faces. As the wheels turns, so do I. I am Shakti, Parvati, Tara, Chamundi, Devi, Durga, and a hundred other names. I am Kali."

Her tongue slipped out to trace the red lips as though she tasted something there. “You have summoned me forth, and so I walk amongst mortals once more. Let us go."

Without another word, she took Fanny's stiff arm and retraced their spiraling steps out of the temple and back to Barrackpore. If the Sepoy escort noticed Miss Hughes’ alteration, they said nothing Fanny could understand.

* * * *

Fanny looked down at her knotted fingers. The sinking sun painted them in shades of crimson and orange, reminding her of the light in Shakti's temple. Hot tears of fury and desperation flowed down her cheeks.

She hardly remembered the rest of the previous day or evening. They had returned to a bustle of activity. Each woman was whisked away by her ayah to dress for the deputation of Sikhs from Ranjit Singh. It had gone well enough, though through it, all Fanny could see were the black holes that were Miss Hughes’ eyes.

She had ventured to mention the name to Gopi. Her salt-and-pepper-haired ayah had exclaimed in indecipherable Hindustani and shaken her head violently. Pointing to her chest, she had said “Shakti,” and nodded vigorously before pointing outside to the jungle-darkness where leopards screamed in the night: “Kali.” She shuddered and pulled the brush vigorously through Fanny's hair.

Fanny had lain awake all night.

Without the punkah, the air closed around her, thick and moist, making it difficult to breathe. Behind her, someone knocked on the open jamb and then pushed through the diaphanous netting without waiting for a reply.

"Yours is a curious people,” said Miss Hughes in a voice that was both crisply British and liltingly Hindustani. Fanny gasped and spun about, holding her hands out as if to ward the other woman away. But those eyes caught her and tethered her as fast as stocks or ropes. “I have much to learn about you. And you have much to learn about me."

Again that smile, that perilous smile that boded such ill, such terror and atrocity, such a different expression than mild Miss Hughes normally wore, that it nearly stopped Fanny's heart. “I wanted to see you once more before I visited your home.” Miss Hughes’ head tilted as if listening to something Fanny could not hear. Her predatory smile widened. “Ah, not one of us indeed. No, I am not. But neither are you, any longer. You have been touched by Shakti and you will never put her gift from your memory, and your body will crave more and more as the desire haunts you. It will be an enduring hunger. And that, that is Kali's gift to you."

She paced forward, her lips skinned back from her teeth, the linen of her scarlet dress rustling. She stopped a hand's breath from Fanny and lifted her hand. Color seeped into the palm until it was the dark burgundy of bruised plums. Fanny blinked. A folded parchment appeared on Miss Hughes’ palm, its smeared, green wax seal unbroken. Miss Hughes tucked it between Fanny's limp fingers. She chuckled, an eager, rich, gloating sound.

Fanny stared, clutching her letter, as Caroline Hughes’ mouth opened, as if to say a final word. But instead, her tongue emerged from her parted lips, stretching and pushing out like a squirming serpent. Blood ran over her tongue and down her chin, staining her chest. Two more arms sprouted from her ribs, one holding a curving scimitar, the other a severed head, blood dripping onto the carpet. From her ears dangled the heads of two snarling demons and around her neck, the string of pearls turned to a grisly chain of skulls. The wells of her eyes overflowed and washed her skin black.

Fanny drew one, two, three gut-wrenching breaths, and then screamed, a blood vessel bursting in her eye with the force of it.

* * * *

Miss Caroline Hughes swept aside the mosquito netting for the breathless ayahs and aides-de-camp who came running at Fanny's cry. She slipped away down the corridor as they lifted Fanny's insensate form onto her bed. She retreated to the apartment where her trunks and boxes had already been collected. She paused to pen a quick note to Fanny before departing for the harbor where the Jupiter lay at anchor.

The note was in Hindustani. Fanny would be unable to resist the mystery of its contents and would seek out someone to read it to her. She would find little solace there.

Caroline Hughes blotted the parchment and folded it, addressing the missive with a flourish. No one could say any longer that her expression lacked for animation, or that her eyes lacked sparkle.

[Back to Table of Contents]

"Discrete Mathematics” by Olaf and Lemeaux; or, the Severed Hand

by David Connerley Nahm

I) When I come downstairs to make myself breakfast, I find a severed hand lying in the floor in front of the sink.

My first thought is: the dog has done it. Then I remember that I don't have a dog.

I stand for a long time. Slipper feet, burgundy robe, bristly chin. Sun—already in early fall—cut to pieces across the hardwood by soon-to-be bare branches.

If I had a dog, life would be easier.

I decide against coffee and go back upstairs to clean myself for work. Walking down the hall. Passing the bathroom. Stopping for a moment at my sister's room. Her door is very slightly cracked. I put my eye to the sliver of dark. I see the cloud of powder blue that is her comforter. I hear her breathing. I am less afraid.

I cannot find my dress shoes and have to wear sneakers.

* * * *

II) In the evening when I come home, the hand is still there. Fix a bowl of cereal and consider it. I have not imagined it. Whether this is a relief or not, I do not know. In the pale green of the fluorescent lamp above the sink, it looks as if it never held life.

Perhaps it isn't real.

I crouch down, bowl still in hand, jaw grinding obliquely, and looked at it. There is a small dark puddle of sticky underneath. The severed portion is turned away from me but I can see its rough edge. There are ants on it. There are ants in lines coursing from it to the counter, to the window, like loose thread.

I put the bowl on the counter and go into the bathroom to be sick.

I wipe my mouth and splash water on my face. In my rush this morning I forgot to shave, and now you can make out the spots on my face clearly where hair didn't grow.

I used the guest soap to wash my hands. It is lavender.

My sister is sitting up in her bedroom, watching TV. Brown hair in long tresses and dark shapes against her thin blue robe. Her arms stuck up waving. I clear away the plates I left for her and kiss her on the forehead. She smiles, looks at me. She wants to know how my day has been. Leaving certain things out, I tell her about it.

Later she drops a fork down the laundry chute.

* * * *

III) So:

a) It is not my imagination. There is something on my kitchen floor.

b) It is a real hand. Not a wax hand or a gardening glove. A severed hand from a person.

c) I do not have a dog. There is a dog that lives in a yard behind my street that keeps me up all night.

d) I live with my sister. It is not her hand. I checked.

e) She could not have done it. She cannot get up and down the stairs. She cannot do much of anything.

* * * *

IV) I work at the University Library. It was built the same year my mother was born. I have worked there for twenty-nine years. I am forty-seven. I work twenty-eight hours a week at the library. It is a small university and a small library. Not very nice. I imagine the stacks burbling with the stiff clicking and whirring of tired machines. They sigh as they search the red shelves for media to reassign. The idea makes me laugh: is there anything funnier than a sad machine?

No one ever checks anything out.

On the weekends I trim yards and cut hedges. I get groceries for elderly women who live on my street who were friends with my mother. I repair bicycles for neighborhood children.

In my garage the tools are neatly arranged on racks and shelves.

I seem very tall when I am in my house because I expect to see it from the perspective I had as a child. But I am not very tall otherwise.

A lot of my clothes are blue. I didn't plan it that way. But it is a trend I have noticed.

The sound outside keeps me awake and I think about how I will need to clean the hand up and get rid of it. As unexpected as it is that it should appear in my kitchen one morning—like a small chocolate bell or a firecracker—it is not likely to suddenly not be there when I wake.

Though, my sister used to reason, things are more likely not to exist than to exist.

* * * *

V) Wednesday—I spend the morning in the basement of the library repairing the spine of a large collection of maps. The names of the countries don't sound familiar. I wonder: how much of what I learned growing up have I forgotten? At lunch I try to make a list of all of the people whom I have worked with at the Library. I use a sheet of hotel stationery from the pocket of my coat—four and a quarter by five and a half, at the top: The Conquistadore Inne. Rye and mustard, soda to drink. I fill the paper on both sides. I remember them all, it seems—but how do I know?

The book of maps is too large to carry alone. Unwieldy and delicate. Spines on books like this degrade easily. Left open and unattended, they want to slump wantonly to the floor. It is a book's natural state: open on the floor, pages down and crumpled. But this one I repaired very well. It will not rip again.

This morning I prodded the hand into a plastic bag with a butter knife. The handle was shaped like a banana. I didn't want to touch the hand, which seemed like a natural impulse. It resisted moving, tacked to the floor by the dark sticky. The ants in confusion at their catastrophe.

The bag tied on the table—I scrubbed the hard wood with soap and water. Then with lemon juice. Then bleach. The crevices and cracks were still dark. Broken sun moved across me as I rubbed.

But what to do with the hand? I glanced at it. I hadn't eaten yet. I did not want to be sick. It was pale and withered, but then it had been sitting on a kitchen floor for several days. There were no rings, but there had been. There was a pale indention around the ring finger. It had been a left hand.

At night I like to sit in the green chair in the corner of my sister's room and read collections of serialized adaptations of old radio programs. The sort of books that were popular when my grandmother was a young girl, when her father built this house. No one reads them now so I am able to find them cheap at junk stores and in people's garages.

From these books I know that if I were to just throw the hand out it will be found by a trash man. It is a cliché. Detectives will come to ask me questions that I cannot answer. I would feel less uncomfortable if I had done something—if I knew what I was hiding, I could be sure to cover all of my mouse holes. But I know nothing—like a cold hand reaching into a wet bag without looking.

Plus, I can't call the detectives myself. Even if I had called right away upon finding a severed hand lying in a pool of sunlight in my kitchen, and even if I had been able to convince them that I knew nothing about it, there had been recent issues with certain neighbors on the street behind my house that I don't care to have this brought into.

So just dumping it is out of the question.

The thought of dismembering it and putting it down the dispose-all is unpleasant to me. I can barely stand to look at it. And then I would be part of whatever horrible fate had befallen the hand. I treasure my distance.

The idea of weighing it down in a bag with irons and throwing it into the lake from a bridge seems like a good one, but there are no lakes near by. And I am afraid of lakes.

Undoubtedly, if I bury it in my backyard—by the light of the moon and the sawing of the crickets—it will either be dug up, comically, by a meddlesome hound or will dig itself out and crawl slowly back to the house. I will wake from a nightmare and hear something small on the stairs.

This, too, is out of the question.

I put the book of maps on the cart to be re-shelved when I am done. The work-study with the prosthetic leg—loafing by the soda machines all morning—now has something to do.

* * * *

VI) That evening I go over my lists as I eat a bowl of cereal. We eat in my sister's bedroom because that is where the television is. She has fallen asleep in her plush green recliner. I set the lists and the bowl on the small table beside my chair. I help her into her bed. She says something that I do not catch as I lift the comforter out from under her and tuck it in. What, I ask. But she is asleep.

I remember her wild hair from when we were children—dark brown straw—flailing around her head. I remember her dental work shining. Her hand holding me against the door to the basement. I was terrified. She was not a cruel older sister like some I have read about. She loved me very much. But she did not like for me to be afraid and sought to cure me of my fears by pressing me to them.

Our mother worked very late. My sister walked me home from school and usually prepared our dinners. If we went to sleep before our mother got home, my sister would walk with me—from room to room—checking to make sure there was no one else in the house.

She is beautiful. She looks nothing now like she did. She is still taller than me, but never stands and is very light so I have no trouble helping her into bed. Patchwork quilts with worn tassels dangling.

We would play in the house. Hiding and Finding. Frozen Catchers. Soap Chase. Name Tapping.

In one game I had to stay in the closet in one of the empty rooms until I heard my name being called by a spirit. My sister knew the duct-work well and would stand in the kitchen—in her sock feet, eating ice cream—and call to me through the grate. I could hear the thin distant voice coming from above or below and I didn't understand. I would bolt, the heavy door's knob slamming into the wall. Sometimes she would arrange clothes from our mother's closet—on the floor or hanging in the window in sinister tableaux.

She did all of that because she loves me.

My sister sat with me on the bed one night. I had been crying. She put a long freckled arm around me and told me there were no ghosts.

There were no monsters.

No creatures clawing or baying. No secret codes or forgotten tales, whistling languages and alien photography. No God nor Jesus nor Allah.

Nothing.

Anything that was unnatural to our world was either so mindblowingly big or toe-curlingly small that we would never know it existed. There was only one miracle, only one exceptional event—that we existed, that we had each other, that we woke up each morning and the sun was shining—but this was every day and seemed normal to us.

I love my sister but she is not always right.

I sit back down in my chair and turn off the TV. Folding up the paper with the list from lunch, I wonder: where did I get hotel stationary?

* * * *

VII) Friday, and I go to see our neighbor to ask if she would like me to trim her grass or hedges or take her small dog for a walk. I tap a small pane of glass in the door for a few minutes but get no answer. Around back I get the same response. Her small dog does not bark either.

Her grass isn't embarrassingly long. Thick, green, but you can tell that it has not been cut in a week or so. I decide to go ahead and trim it. She always lets me do it and if for some reason she didn't want it this week, I will not ask her to pay.

Our mother used to work for her, cleaning, caring for her children—sometimes late into the night when our neighbor and her husband were out with clients. There is a large moose head in the living room that I am afraid of.

Once the neighbor sat me on her lap and tried to explain to me that the moose was dead. There was nothing that it could do to me but look. She had red cheeks and her breath smelled of soft vanilla. She kept sweets in a cupboard for my sister and me.

She wore bright green pantsuits, cream blouses that tossed waves as she stood on the deck. That was when I was younger. Now browns and dark blue. Wool and thick knits.

Our houses were built the same year and look a lot alike. When I was a child I thought I lived in both. I thought water towers were filled with elves who made dress shoes. I thought utility poles were very smooth trees. I thought everyone knew my mother.

* * * *

VIII) On Monday a young professor from the Mathematics department comes into the library. The work-study tries to help her find what she is looking for but they have no luck and come to my desk.

We should have a book on Advanced Discrete Mathematics, the work-study says. The professor is wearing green elastic-waist running shorts made of denim and a tan T-shirt that says something. She smiles. Weak chin. The computer says we have it, but the text is not where it should be.

I explain that the computers aren't as up to date as the new card index I have been working on. I show them the listing for the book in question. It is not there either.

I thought I saw it, says the work-study shifting his weight on his false leg. Big book.

It must be an error. I get agitated when the books are misplaced.

Mind if I look around, asks the professor. The work-study offers to help her.

I go back to my desk. Perhaps I have made a mistake, I think.

* * * *

IX) Our mother began working for our neighbor after our grandmother died. I don't remember a time when she didn't work there. She had other jobs over the years. In the mornings. Working cleaning in the elementary school or the municipal building.

Very early—in a brightly colored memory I might not remember myself—a boy is making fun of my sister. He has red hair and a twin that doesn't speak. He asks if we live in the dumpster. My sister yells at him that our great-grandfather owned the whole town and our house is bigger than his and that he eats his own shit. The boy with red hair puts pencil shavings in her desk. He smacks the back of her navy-blue smock with an eraser.

One day the principal is in the hall. So are many teachers. They are looking in a locker. The red-haired boy is sitting on the dull tile, crying. His brother is on his tiptoes behind the adults. Our mother is standing at the end of the hall, the lines of the checkered tile pointing to her feet and the long dust mop she is leaning on.

My sister says that the twins have to go to a different school. Her class gets a new guinea pig that they name “Deer.” No one else makes fun of my sister.

But our mother always worked for our neighbor.

And at night my sister sat on the edge of my bed with me and told me about the parson who slept in the haunted house to pacify the pretty young spirit who was doomed to wander until her killer was found. My sister drew her picture: stiff hair, long neck, no eyes.

She saw I was scared and told me she made it up.

Now I tell my sister stories. I can tell she understands though she doesn't say.

* * * *

X) The Mathematics professor comes back another day. She and the work-study spend hours poring over the card catalog. She wants to see some of our special books. They still haven't found the first book she was looking for.

When I leave, they are sitting at a large table with a number of old volumes in stacks or open like butterfly-cut pork chops. The collection of maps near their feet.

* * * *

XI) I spent the morning with a stack of lists.

* * * *

XII) One summer a car hit my sister. She was standing in the alley behind the house. She was trying to get me to follow her on an exploration to the grocery store. Her pigtails bobbed with impatience.

I was scared to go. I told her we would get in trouble. She stomped her foot.

She said, Come O—

I remember: our mother crying. Our neighbor crying—driver's door still open. I remember the ambulance siren, flitting over the trees for many minutes, the sound shifting around but not getting closer. Red brick, cobbles. A chrome bumper. Racket like crickets, sobs lofting soft volleys of muted bellows.

Mother wanted to work less for a little while. Mother said she was at least entitled to that. I saw her in the kitchen red cheeked, wetted. She wanted to quit but could not. I was old enough at this point to watch my sister when I got home. My mother would stay at home until I got there and then work later at the neighbors.

At first I was scared of the way she looked—but I love my sister.

* * * *

XIII) I ride the elevator back down to the basement after lunch. The director is waiting for me. She is sitting at my desk. The work-study is sitting in a purple plastic chair by the soda machine crying softly. I see his leg in pieces on the floor next to him. The math professor is talking to one of the security guards. There are quite a few standing around. When they see me get off of the elevator, they pause. They look. I can see a cut across the work-study's cheek and the beginning of a black eye's blossom. The Mathematics professor is holding a plastic bag of ice to her lip. I step forward, wondering what has happened. The work-study sniffs a thick croak of mucus. The director stands, her hands up in front of her. Three of the security guards—in satiny green jackets and colorful patches—approach also. Their shoulder-mounted radios click and fizzle. I like the sound.

I am fired. I am not to return to the library. I am not to return to campus. I am not to approach the work-study or the Mathematics professor. If I do they will press charges. I am handed a few things from my desk in a box: Ink, keys, ID, letters, little earrings, Dictaphone, harmonica, emerald ribbon.

* * * *

XIV) When the neighbor's husband died, mother stopped working at their house. She said she no longer had to work. We were being taken care of.

We tried to go to the funeral but couldn't.

I slept outside one night and saw two little girls in robin's egg blue dresses walk from the garage and climb up the maple tree. They didn't come down.

* * * *

XV) I got rid of the lists. I think I found them all.

* * * *

XVI) My sister drops her fork down the laundry chute. I can hear its soft chuck against the dirt floor.

The basement. I have not gone into the basement in years. But it is the last fork.

I pause with my hand on the knob. There is the taste of an edge in the back of my throat—like a handful of straight pins poured out. The light from the open door falls on my nice shoes sitting on the bottom step. They are filthy.

I walk down in the dark. At the bottom of the steps I pull the chain on the light bulb. It is bare and—as it clicks on—swings. Everything dances.

The chute is in front of me. Below it the pile shines.

Once, my sister sat on my bed. I was afraid. I had snuck into the cupboard and eaten some sweets without permission. Plastic-wrapped peppermints. I knew what I had done was wrong and knew that something bad would happen to me.

She comforted me. She said, Not everything happens for a reason. Not everything that happens is caused by something else. Some things just are. Some just aren't. Just because you do something wrong doesn't mean that you will be punished and just because you do something right doesn't mean you will be rewarded. There's not someone watching, keeping tally of your happiness and sadness. Your kindness and your cruelties. No one is watching us.

I love my sister but she is not always right.

[Back to Table of Contents]

SHH by Peter Dabbene

Establish

Furnish

Burnish

Distinguish

Polish

Nourish

Tarnish

Languish

Anguish

Demolish

Refurbish

Finish

Publish

Flourish

Relish

Perish

Vanish

[Back to Table of Contents]

Bright Waters by John Brown

In the spring of 1718 Jan van Doorn returned to his log house with a load of molasses, flour, and a fine green dress for his new wife. He found she had run out on him and taken half of his goods with her.

She was the second wife he'd bought. And the second one to run away before a season was out.

Her name was Woman With Turtle Eyes, an older Huron of twenty-three years. He had thought an older woman would be more stable than the girl he had purchased the first time. Besides, she said she wanted him to buy her.

Jan didn't understand how the men in the settlements courted and kept their women. And it couldn't be because he was ugly. He'd seen plenty of ugly men marry. The only ones that seemed to have any interest in him were the whores at Fort Montreal, and when he'd given in to his urges that one cursed time, they took far more from him than his money.

There was nothing to do about Woman With Turtle Eyes. If he hunted her down, she'd just run away again. He could beat her, but she'd run nevertheless. Besides, her theft meant he'd have to start working his old claim, and there were precious few weeks before the beavers began to shed their winter coats. No, there was nothing to do but fold up the dress and put it in the cedar chest.

He looked down upon the dress for a few moments admiring the fine, shimmering cloth. Then he closed the lid.

That night Jan cooked himself a meal of kale and old potatoes. When he finished, he rubbed deer urine onto his traps to prepare them for the morrow. Then he went to bed.

Over the next few weeks he worked his claim, cured pelts, and began to rebuild what he'd lost. But as the weather warmed, someone began raiding his traps. The third time this happened he found six traps in a row with both bait and beaver gone. He held up the last trap and examined it. The other times he'd been too late to catch the thieves, but this time the blood matting the hair on the jaws was still wet.

If it was LaRue or English Pete, he was going to murder the man. That, or sell him off to the Abenaki. If it was a Mohawk, well, then he'd have to tame his response.

He didn't trap much anymore. There simply wasn't as much game here as there had been ten years ago. Besides, it was much more profitable to trade instead of trap. Let the Iroquois tribes do the work. He'd profit on both the buying and the selling. Nevertheless, he held agreements with all the trappers and Sachems in the area. This was his claim. Even if it was small.

His next set of traps lay only fifty yards farther up the stream. And by the great William of Orange, they'd better be full.

He decided to walk carefully and was rewarded for his caution, for as he crested the next rise in the trail, he spied three Indian boys standing over the trap he'd set next to the willow there. Two held a pole with half a dozen beaver draped over it. The third bent down and sprung the trap.

He looked at their leg tattoos. Mohawk. One of the Iroquois tribes. Well, he couldn't kill them then.

Not that he'd want to. They were, after all, just boys. Still, Indian boys weren't like the lads back in Rotterdam. It had been small Abenaki lads, just like these, that tried to take his scalp in his first year as a trapper. He'd killed them all with the blood flowing down the side of his face and a chunk of his scalp flapping about like a wig.

And so he'd need to be ready. Hunting knives hung from the belts at their waists. But none carried a war club. Only one held a bow.

Jan sneaked back the way he had come and then up and around in front of them so that the boys would walk right up the trail into him. The path bent around a hill where the river willow grew thick. He waited for them there.

He withdrew rope and a knife from his pack. He couldn't kill them, but he could tie them up and scare them into good Christian men.

Just as he was wondering if he hadn't misjudged their direction, he heard footsteps and low voices. He wrapped the ends of the rope in his hands.

The first two boys passed and didn't see him. Each carried the end of a pole laden with beaver on his shoulder. When the third turned the corner, Jan roared and lunged for him.

But instead of catching the boy up in the rope, he ran into a white woman wearing a yellow bonnet who yelled like the devil himself and all his horned helpers.

She did not look like a slave. She did not react like one either. Before he could turn back to the boys, the woman set herself, brought up an Iroquois corn stick, and walloped him on the side of the head.

Jan lost his vision momentarily. When it came back he could see the boys preparing for an attack.

He pulled his war club out of his belt and warned them away. He was two heads taller than most men, and his war club was a good three feet long.

"I promise you by Hiawatha's bones,” he said in Mohawk. “I'll crack every one of your thieving heads like a pumpkin."

"Stop,” said the woman in Mohawk. “All of you."

One of the boys looked over at her.

"Stop this now."

Neither Jan nor the boys put down their weapons.

"Crow Child, put your knife down. Now!"

The boy hesitated and then lowered his knife.

"And you,” she said. “That is Iron Wood's boy. You touch any of us, and his village will feed your parts to the dogs."

Iron Wood's boy? Jan looked at the boy closer. He saw the turtle tattoos on his legs marking his clan. He saw his face. How had he not recognized him? He'd grown.

"These are my traps,” he said. “This is my claim. And I'll suffer no thieves to take what's mine. If he's Iron Wood's boy, then I'd like to talk to the Wise Mother of the turtle clan about the proper punishment for thieves."

The boy didn't show much. They were trained not to. But Jan saw his eyes round just a little. The Wise Mother of the turtle clan ran her village. She was the one who chose the Sachem, and she was not someone to trifle with. They'd flog the boy twenty times or hang him up from a tree for a day. There had been too much blood shed between Indians and traders over incidents just like this.

The boy looked to the woman.

"I think we can work this out,” said the woman.

Jan turned to her. What woman in her right mind would be out walking with three Mohawk boys anyway? Granted, the Mohawks around here hadn't attacked any English or Dutch settlers for a few years. But Mohawks weren't the only ones in these woods.

"Who are you?” asked Jan. “And why do you speak Mohawk?"

"That is none of your business,” she said.

Her accent when speaking Mohawk was just like Pete's.

"You're that English teacher the Indians have been talking about,” he said.

"I'm not English,” she said. “And no one has trapped here for years. How do we know they're yours?"

Most women avoided Jan. None looked him in the eye. It was disarming to have her look at him so. But it was also obvious she didn't know anything about trapping. “They're mine because the traps have my mark."

The woman looked hard at the boys. They did not meet her gaze.

"I see,” she said. “And if they promise never to raid your traps again?"

He looked at the boys. They'd be back. He would have come back were he in their position. “You may speak Mohawk and spit fire, but you're still an English woman. Not a Sachem or Wise Mother. You can't bind them. I'm afraid that won't do."

"They're boys,” she said.

"They're thieves. And they're still young enough that they can learn. Or would you simply let this bad wood grow until it was too hard to cut out without killing the tree?"

"There are other ways,” she said.

"Well, until you think of a better one, I'll be walking back to Iron Wood's village with you."

He could see she did not like that. But he didn't care. He raised his club and spoke to the boys. “You can put down your knives and we'll walk to your village like men. Or I can break a few bones and then carry you to your village over my shoulder."

The boys looked at the woman.

She motioned for them to put their weapons down.

The surprising thing was that they did. How an English woman got such authority he could never guess.

When their weapons lay on the grass, he quickly bound their wrists to the pole holding the beavers. It would not do for them to be able to act on second thoughts. And they would have second thoughts. Then he began to march them the three miles to the village.

On the way he asked her what she had been doing.

"They were escorting me to their village to teach them English, the Bible, and how to shoot muskets."

Yet another surprise. She took a great risk, or the English had suddenly reversed their policy on Indians and muskets. The English thought it wise to prohibit the sale of guns to their Iroquois allies. It was a stupid policy that Jan never followed. The Dutch had traded guns freely with the Iroquois and profited greatly. He supposed the magistrates would consider shooting lessons a similar offense. If they ever found out, she'd be pilloried and whipped.

"You're teaching them how to shoot?” he asked.

"Are you deaf?” Then she looked at his ear.

His ear was just one of the many things about his face that people felt they must look at.

"A bear thought it might taste good for lunch,” he said.

"A bear would have taken more than that for lunch. I'm not a fool."

He didn't think she was. But it was the truth. “OK, let's see. I lost it in a fight."

"See, a little truth never hurts."

"Then how about this truth. You're a foolish woman to walk about in these woods with nothing more than a corn stick. What if I had been Abenaki? They'd love a pretty thing like you."

She set her jaw at that and walked up ahead of him and stayed there the rest of the way.

* * * *

Iron Wood's village was medium-sized for Iroquois villages and sat in the middle of twenty acres of cleared land. They burned the forest here many years ago. It would not be long before they would have to burn another place and move the village there. The land only lasted so long before it failed.

The village was encircled by two wooden palisades 14 feet high. Inside that ring stood ten great longhouses and a number of smaller ones. Jan hailed the warrior keeping guard over this entrance, and then led the boys to Iron Wood's longhouse.

Just this walk through the village would shame them.

When he arrived at the longhouse, a girl ran inside. A moment later the Wise Mother of the clan stepped out. She wore a fine blue soldier's jacket, French cut with brass buttons.

"May the sun favor your crops,” he said.

She looked at the boys and back to Jan.

"May you have corn in season,” she said. “What have you brought me, One Who Keeps Them Awake?"

"Beavers,” he said. “And boys who need learning."

"Hummm,” she said. “Let us talk in private.” She led the boys and Jan into the longhouse.

They talked long and Jan agreed that they should deliver double the number of beavers stolen or the equivalent in wampum.

Jan actually preferred the wampum because the Iroquois and many of the trappers used it as coin. You could carry a tidy sum in nothing more than a sack. Of course, that also made it easier to steal. It had been his wampum that his last wife stole.

He told Crow Child he'd bring him back a musket if he delivered by next spring. And he'd warned him not to steal any of it, beavers or wampum, from anyone else. The boy promised. It was a fair penance, but one that would bring esteem to Crow Child if he kept it.

Jan could have asked for some physical punishment, but it was unwise for traders to make any enemies among his sources. Those boys would grow up, and Iron Wood's son might become the next Sachem.

During the conversation he also found out the Mohawk called the English woman Bright Waters. They said she'd been taken from the Abenaki.

She must have been a slave to the Abenaki. No wonder she had gotten prickly when he mentioned that. But then she was twice the fool to be walking about with nothing more than a corn stick. He didn't want to think what the devils had done with her. Unless, of course, she had been held for ransom. Then they would have left her unmolested. Otherwise, he hoped they'd taken her when she was a child.

She should have been Iron Wood's property. But she had bartered almost a year's lessons in English and muskets for her freedom.

Jan suspected there was more to it than that. Iron Wood probably knew owning her would anger his English allies. They would have made him give her up eventually. So he got what he could. And knowing English would place Iron Wood in a better position to trade and negotiate. Och, but Iron Wood was smart.

* * * *

On his way out of the village Jan stopped by Crazy Rabbit's longhouse. Iron Wood was the war Sachem. But Crazy Rabbit was the peace Sachem. It didn't matter who currently ruled, a trapper needed to have good relations with both Sachems if he wanted to trade with a village. Jan always gave Crazy Rabbit first look at the goods he traded.

Crazy Rabbit was not there, but his wife Willow was.

"Ah, One Who Keeps Them Awake,” she said. “I'm about to eat succotash with venison."

"And maple syrup?” asked Jan.

"Of course,” she said. “Come sit and tell me if you have a son. Or better yet, a daughter."

She wanted one of his children to marry into her family. “Neither,” said Jan.

"Barren?"

"Well, she never stayed around long enough for me to find out."

Willow clucked and shook her head. “Huron cannot be trusted. I told you."

Jan shrugged.

"Why don't you come into my family? I have daughters and granddaughters that would keep you warm. You can have your pick. Mix your blood with that of a real human and I cannot imagine the sons you'd grow. My warriors would be the talk of the five nations."

"It's a great honor,” he said. She'd invited him into her family before. “But you know I cannot."

"Bah!” she said. “I do not want to hear your excuses. You are wasting your seed. Lie with one of my daughters. Sons with your strength, your orenda, would send the Abenaki and Huron running for the caves."

He considered her offer the first time. She thought the orenda, the spirit that was in all things, made him large and quick. But he could not lie with her daughters. Not that he was the most pious man. But fornication was clearly forbidden by the Holy Word. If Jan's grandfather could die by the hands of Catholic armies for his beliefs, Jan could certainly keep his urges buttoned up.

He would not marry into her family and become part of her longhouse. And it was her longhouse. The Iroquois were strange this way. They traced their genealogy through their mothers. The mothers ruled the longhouses. The Wise Mothers of each clan chose the Sachem. But it wasn't just that the mothers controlled everything on a local level. He wasn't against a woman ruler. After all, many a land had been ruled by a queen.

The problem was that he would then be a Mohawk. He would have to fight their wars and live here in this village. He didn't want to live in a European settlement. Why would he want to live here?

"My guardian spirit tells me not to,” he said.

"I do not like your guardian spirit then."

"I'll marry someday,” he said. “And then we shall see.” And perhaps he wouldn't marry. It seemed the good Lord wanted to make a monk out of him whether he was Protestant or not.

Jan ate his succotash and told her the story of a German man who awoke one morning to find his cow wearing his pants. Then he told her about Ulysses and the sirens. She always asked for his stories. They all did. That was how he had gotten his name.

"That's a powerful magic,” she said. “We have a powerful magic. Perhaps it is time to use it on you to help you find a wife."

Jan suspected she wanted a medicine woman to come chant over him.

"I will call the bone breaker to help you find a wife."

"I don't need magic,” he said. The last thing he needed was an Indian witch placing some curse on him. “No amount of blowing tobacco smoke in my face is going to make me any prettier."

Her brows furrowed.

"You won't give me sons. You won't take my magic. Maybe the One Who Keeps Them Awake does not want to trade with this village anymore."

Was she threatening to prevent him from trading? She could influence the council. She was Crazy Rabbit's wife and the mother of the turtle clan. There were others they traded with, but Iron Wood's village traded with him the most.

He decided she was threatening him.

"What do you propose?"

"A small tattoo."

A tattoo? That was all?

"Where?” he asked.

"Here,” she said and poked him beside his eye.

It was only a tattoo. And it would secure her good will, at least for one season. However, he was convinced that nothing but God's grace would produce him a wife. “Fine,” he said. “As long as it comes with more of your succotash."

* * * *

Jan slept in Willow's longhouse that night. The next morning a very old mother came into the tent. Tattoo lines and triangles crisscrossed her forehead and cheeks. Tattoo spiders clung to each of her index fingers.

"This is our healing woman,” said Willow.

Jan had never seen her. But the village held about 700 people. Maybe he'd missed her. It was possible.

"I know you,” she said. “I dreamed about you."

Jan doubted that. These Indians were always trying to read meaning into their dreams. They could dream of horse farts and still think some guardian spirit was trying to communicate with them.

She uncovered a bowl of pigment that smelled bitter. She made him sit on the ground next to the fire. Then she placed a small white bone in a clay pot and placed the pot in the coals.

"Where's your awl?” asked Jan.

"Shush,” she said. Then she lit a pipe and blew smoke in his and Willow's faces. After that she chanted for quite some time in an unfamiliar language.

Jan was wondering if she was going to chant all afternoon, when she took the hot bone out of the pot and broke it. She changed her chant and, with the sharp points of the bone as an awl, scraped the pigment into his skin.

It burned. But he told himself it would only make him more acceptable to the clans.

The old mother finally stopped her scraping and chanting and sat back and watched him.

Willow wore a huge grin. She gave him a small looking glass, then rose and left the longhouse.

What he saw was a bright red line that spiraled around itself five times. It's small tail connected with the corner of his eye. He thought the red was his blood, but when he touched a finger to it, he realized it was the color of the pigment.

He looked at the pigment bowl the old woman had used. It was not red.

"Does this change color?” he asked.

"When the orenda has run its course,” the old woman said.

For a moment Jan wished he had not let them do this to him. But he told himself it was an investment, a piece of flesh for a good trading contact.

A few moments later Willow returned with her thirteen-year-old daughter, Moon.

She motioned at Jan. “What do you think?"

Moon looked at him then shook her head and looked away.

This was the daughter Willow offered him before. Moon had not wanted him then. She obviously did not want him now.

Willow grimaced. She turned to the old woman who shrugged.

Perhaps Willow thought Jan would be more agreeable if Moon showed more interest in him. If that was true, she was wrong.

"So what's this supposed to do?” he asked.

"Make you more appealing,” said Willow. She looked him up and down. “It's his hair, isn't it?"

"Corn does not grow in a day,” the old woman said. “The magic will gather strength over time."

Willow grabbed a basket with a flint knife. “But we can clear away the weeds to help it grow. With that beard and pelt on your head, you look more like an animal than a man. Let me shave it off."

"No,” said Jan. This was exactly why he couldn't live in her longhouse. She would be telling how to blow his nose before too long. “Shave my hair and I lose my power."

"Ah, I've heard that story from the children.” She nodded. “Then at least take some bear grease to tame it."

"I'll ask my guardian spirit for approval,” said Jan.

Willow frowned and shook her head.

"I thought this was powerful magic,” said Jan.

The old woman spoke. “We don't bend the bones of our ancestors to unnatural magics. This will not force a yearning for you upon anyone. It will simply help your beauty shine forth."

"And nobody can see that beauty underneath an animal's hide,” said Willow. “If you cover it, you bury the magic."

"Hair is the mantle given us by the creator,” said Jan.

He could tell none of them believed that, but he wasn't going to shave. His hair covered his birthmark and scars. And he wasn't going to go about plastered with stinking bear grease.

"Don't waste the orenda from those bones,” said Willow.

"I wouldn't think of it."

* * * *

When Jan left the village later that day, he saw the English woman again. She was showing five children how to pack a musket.

Perhaps she wasn't as helpless as he thought. If she had lived any amount of time with the Abenaki, she would have to know more of the woods than any number of ladies fresh off the boat from the old land.

He watched her. She was not a proper woman. But that wasn't always a liability. She knew how to load a musket. And quickness would be good to have at your back if you needed to defend your home.

She looked over at him.

After a moment he realized he was simply standing there looking at her, so he waved a fare-thee-well.

She acted like she didn't see him at all and turned back to the children.

So much for the magic of Iroquois bones.

Jan walked down to the path that followed the river. He wondered where she would go when her bargain was completed. One thing was for sure. She'd better go out walking with more than her courage and a corn stick next time, or she just might not fulfill her bargain. A dog and musket would be a good investment.

* * * *

Jan's tattoo earned him some remarks when he went into the trading post. He never told them how or why he got it. Let them guess. In the end, they made up a better story than any he could think of. He heard from LaRue that all the traders thought it was a sign of a contract between him and Iron Wood and the principal reason why they were having such a difficult time moving their goods.

Jan replied that they all could get the tattoo if they just asked for it. Of course, it would cost them each a child.

He trapped for the next few weeks on his own. When he came back to the settlements, he began to notice women offering him furtive glances. A few days later came unabashed smiles. He told himself that the women had always been so friendly, and he only noticed it now because of the fuss Willow made with her tattoo.

But not long afterwards English Pete stopped him at the trading post.

"Have you found gold then?” asked Pete.

"Gold?” asked Jan. Why would anyone think that?

"It's being noised about that you're preparing to build an estate."

"The rivers are fatter this year than I expected, and I've made back all the wampum my last wife stole from me. But it's hardly a treasure trove."

"No,” said Pete. Then he lowered his voice. “It's said that Jan van Doorn has happened upon a great Iroquois fortune."

"Pete,” said Jan, “you and I both know that the Iroquois are not gold diggers. There is no Spanish treasure in the north."

"Well, then I can't figure it out."

"What?"

"Either you've become handsome or rich. Looking at you I can see that you're ugly as ever. So I have to guess that it's because you're rich."

Jan had no idea what he was talking about. “Pete, you've been drinking bad whiskey."

"Van Doorn, I'd hide the gold if I were you. Not everyone is as honest as I."

Then Pete walked off.

Jan turned into the trading post and soon found out what Pete was babbling about. Both Gordon, the post owner, and Lancaster were there. It seemed the baker's wife, the spinster Patrice, and the widow Millard had all expressed an interest in him.

"I don't even know the baker's wife,” said Jan.

"You're about the only one who doesn't,” said Lancaster.

"She's married."

"That hasn't stopped her before. What I can't understand is how you found the gold."

"There is no gold,” said Jan.

"Then don't let anyone know or you'll lose your advantage. If it were me, I'd warm the spinster first. She has a fine stout figure."

Jan realized they all thought he had found gold because that could be the only reason anyone would take an interest in him.

Suddenly Jan did not want an advantage. He did not want to warm anyone. He didn't want their smiles.

Then he thought of Willow's tattoo. Was there actually something more to it than chanting and smoke?

Jan had an easy way to find out.

He turned to Gordon. “I need some scraps of cloth."

"Not another dress,” said Gordon.

"No, I need an eye patch.” Except it wouldn't cover his eye. It would cover the tattoo.

When he'd stitched together his patch and tied it about his head, he visited the baker's. The wife stood at the counter dripping honey onto buns.

She looked up and smiled at him. Then he shut the door behind him and slid the patch over the tattoo.

Her face changed. It was slight, but the welcome was gone.

He looked her in the eye. “I've a hunger for something sweet and warm,” he said.

"No,” she said. “I can't. I've baked nothing today."

"Perhaps tomorrow."

"No,” she said. It was barely a whisper.

Then he moved the patch off his tattoo.

She looked intently at him as if she'd noticed something strange or was confused. Then her demeanor changed. She placed her hand over her breast. “I think the light from outside affected my vision. I'm sorry. What did you want?"

"I've a great appetite."

"You're a large man."

"That has its advantages,” he said.

She arched an eyebrow and grinned. “I should imagine."

It was the tattoo. Of course, it didn't help that she was as unsteady as March sunshine. Jan slipped the patch back over the tattoo and watched her wanton look turn all to business. Then he walked out.

He tried his experiment on the spinster and widow and a few others along the way. All but the chandler's wife reacted in a similar fashion, but it was said a pickled heart beat in her breast and she couldn't be relied on in matters of love and friendship. Whether that was true or not, she was certainly immune to heathen witchery, for he planted himself next to her in the apothecary for at least two minutes, and she didn't so much as bat an eyelash.

And witchery was what it was, plain and simple.

He'd been a fool. They could have performed any manner of Indian devil craft upon him. This was exactly how a man lost his soul.

That evening Jan sought out a minister and inquired how he might remove the evil. The minister told him that if his hand offended him, he should cut it off. If his eye offended, he should pluck it out. Surely, his tattoo should be sliced off. No miracle would do him any good as long as he displayed an open invitation to Satan on his face.

It seemed the procedure for casting out devils had changed somewhat since the days of the Apostles. Jan had been hoping for a simple blessing, a painless take-thy-bed-and-walk approach.

Perhaps the patch wasn't such a bad idea.

He thanked the minister and left.

The next day he trekked out to Iron Wood's village. When he found Willow, he demanded she remove the curse.

"If I had wanted to curse you,” said Willow. “I would have ordered the healing woman to put a yearning on you for your horse, or maybe a bear."

"Curse or blessing, I want it removed."

"I cannot remove it."

Perhaps the minister was right. “Then I'll cut it off."

"That might have worked the first few days, but that won't stop it now. The orenda is in your bones. It will stay there until you let it run its course."

"And how long will that be?"

"Until you are complete."

"It's unnatural devilry,” he said.

"It's how you are made,” she said. “Your own stories say it was not good for the first man to be alone. He needed a Wise Mother. And only when she arrived was it good. There's a piece of you missing, and until you find it, you won't be whole. Now come see my daughter again."

"I'm not going to deceive her,” he said. “Or anyone else."

"It is not deceit."

"And will she say that on the day the orenda runs its course? No, she will look at me and despair."

"Bah,” said Willow. “That happens to every pair who feels the fire of passion. One day the roaring fire burns down. Did the passion deceive them? Was it unnatural? No, it took its course and burned down to something you can cook with, something useful."

Jan could not see the fault in her argument, but he knew it was wrong. It simply wasn't honest. Besides, such things could not be from God. He'd read about the gift of miracles, tongues, and charity. But not the gift of glamour. And so if it was not of God, it must be of the Devil. And Jan did not want to owe the Adversary even a nit's teaspoon.

"No good can come of this,” he said.

Her looked softened. “You do not listen, One Who Keeps Them Awake. When one bathes in the river and braids his lock of hair before meeting his beloved, is that dishonest? Your own women wear painful clothing to appeal to the silly European sense of beauty. Is that dishonest?"

It wasn't the same, but Jan couldn't see the difference.

"All we've done is highlight what's good in you. Now come let my daughter see what I do."

"No,” said Jan. “I cannot."

She looked hard at him then. “So be it.” Then she dismissed him with a flick of her wrist.

He could tell she was exasperated. But he could not reconcile witchcraft with girdles and perfumes. And he was sure he didn't want to lure a woman into his bed. Jan was determined: He would have a wife honestly or would not have one at all.

It seemed he would have to carry the devilry in his bones, but it couldn't be considered a sin if he didn't profit from it. So he wore his patch and traded as he normally did.

Sometimes when he saw the spinster Patrice he was tempted to walk about without the patch. But he never gave in.

The days passed and he began to think more about the English woman. She was the only European woman he'd found who looked at him with something other than pity or fear. Perhaps she was beyond the powers of the tattoo. It was possible. Not all the women in the settlements had inquired after him. And the healing woman had said the magic would not force anyone.

In August he found out who she was. He went to the post to get powder and beans. He was drinking a glass of whiskey when Lancaster said, “Have you heard about Devil Jack's daughter? She's out teaching the savages the Bible."

"Isn't that a bit dangerous?” someone asked.

"Well, I guess not for the daughter of Devil Jack,” he said.

Devil Jack was renowned from New Amsterdam to Ticonderoga for killing more Indians than any man living. He'd taken twenty arrows and lived to tell about it. He was as bloody a man as had ever lived. And he'd had eight sons just as bloody as he.

"I thought him and his were all killed by the Abenaki,” said Jan.

"That's what we all thought. But apparently he had a daughter that was taken as a slave. That was nine years ago. She was recovered just last autumn by a Mohawk raiding party and bargained for her freedom."

"What did she bargain with?” someone asked.

"You figure it out,” said Lancaster.

Devil Jack's daughter. Surely this was the same woman he met earlier. It would explain her bite.

"I would not be so hasty to smirch her name,” said Jan. “It wasn't that sort of bargain at all. I talked with those who took her, and they wanted her English."

"What for?"

"Think a moment,” said Jan. “How might it profit a Sachem when he realizes that he doesn't need us anymore, that he can go directly to the traders in New Amsterdam and speak their language?"

That caught their attention.

"What's her name?” asked Jan.

"Shannon,” Lancaster said. “Shannon Burke."

"Has she gone savage then?” someone asked.

"No,” said Lancaster. “I was just down in New York. I hear she has an aunt there."

"It's a waste,” someone suggested. “Who would want an Indian-used woman?"

"I would not dismiss her so hastily,” said Jan. There was a spirit in her that was very appealing. “She's got a bit of her father's fire."

Then he told them all about his beavers and getting clobbered on the side of the head. He decided to embellish a few of the details.

"That's not quite the version I heard earlier this summer,” English Pete said. “I think at least three warriors were added to the count this time."

Pete and his memory took all the fun out of it.

"You must have heard wrong,” said Jan. “I'm telling you there were nine."

* * * *

In September, before the river froze, Jan helped guard a load of goods down the river to New Amsterdam. He still could not bring himself to call it York. Why the King signed it away, he'd never understand. The Dutch had, after all, won the war.

The trip down might have been pleasant, but the cook put something evil into a soup that made him vomit for three days. However, by the time they arrived, he had recovered enough to get off his deathbed.

The city was grand. In the last three years it seemed a thousand more houses had been built. The English were multiplying here like rabbits.

He had two days before the ship sailed back up. During the first day, Jan ate enough fritters and crullers to make a man sick. He bought a Protestant Bible and a copy of a Dutch translation of a story about a crazy man in Spain who thought he was a knight.

In the evening of that first day, he thought he saw Devil Jack's daughter hurrying down Wall Street holding a basket. He tried to follow her, but lost her when she called at a house and went inside.

The next day he found out from a Lutheran minister where Shannon lived and thought of making a call. But then rethought. Why would she want to see him? He could bathe and shave, but that would only show more of his scars and birthmark. They had not met in favorable conditions. Still, he'd never quite met a woman like her.

That first night he did not sleep well and he couldn't decide if it was the fritters or the woman that kept him awake.

He did not have much to offer a woman. He lived alone in a small house far from such a splendid city as New Amsterdam. Here it was safe. There she might be molested, again.

Still she was a brave woman. She knew the tribes.

Sometime before the sun came up, he decided he'd call on her. The first thing he did was go to the bathhouse. Then he paid a barber to trim his beard and hair up short.

But when he exited the barber's, he despaired. He had not called on a proper woman before. He did not know the rules. He'd never known the rules. He supposed he should bring some gift but had no idea what that would be.

In the end he settled on a fine cheese.

When he stood on the porch of her house, he realized he would have to make conversation. But what would they converse about?

A woman opened the door. Her eyes widened and she took a step back.

He had always had that affect on women. They always acted like he was going to eat them. He'd hoped the haircut would have made him more of a gentleman. Obviously, Willow's advice did not help with Europeans. He thought about uncovering the tattoo, but decided against it. He cleared his throat. He could tell she did not trust him. “I'm here to see Miss Burke."

"And you are?"

Och, he was so clumsy with these things. “Jan van Doorn."

"She's not here right now,” she said.

"I see,” said Jan. He had been a fool to come. “Perhaps I could wait. I have a cheese."

The woman looked confused by his last statement.

"For her,” he said.

"Oh, I can take that. Did she purchase it from Zwaart's?"

She thought he was a delivery boy. “No, I wanted to bring it to her myself as a gift. I met her among the Mohawk and thought I might speak with her. I'm leaving back up into the interior tomorrow, and well I—"

"I see,” the woman said. She tried to suppress a smile, but the corners of her mouth gave it away.

A cheese must have been the wrong kind of gift.

"I'm Shannon's aunt. She's out gathering firewood, but you can wait on the porch."

"Of course,” he said. It wouldn't be proper for him to wait with her alone in her house. This was proving more difficult than he imagined.

He waited on the porch with his cheese sitting next to him and watched two boys run up and down the street trying to fly a kite. He did not see or hear Shannon arrive. Just when he began to wonder if he would have to wait on that porch until dark, the door opened again and the aunt said, “Will you come in, Mister van Doorn?"

Jan rose. He ducked into the doorway but then he couldn't straighten back up. Whoever had built this house had been exceedingly short.

"Please sit here,” she said and motioned at a chair that looked like it was made for a child.

"Are you sure I won't break that?” asked Jan.

She looked him up and down. “No, not entirely."

He almost offered to sit on the floor, but thought better of it. The chair wobbled and creaked when he settled onto it. He could feel if he shifted his weight just a little that it would indeed crack.

Shannon came in then wearing a plain lace covering over her hair and just about stopped his heart. She did not wear fine clothes. She was not shaped like the spinster Patrice. And yet she was beautiful.

Jan rose and thrust the cheese out in front of him. “I thought you might enjoy this,” he said.

"I'm sorry,” she said. “I don't believe I ever heard your proper name."

Jan thought back. She was right. She didn't even know who he was. And here he'd come calling. “Van Doorn,” he said. “Jan. I grew up outside Rotterdam."

She took the cheese from him and handed it to her aunt. A meaningful look passed between them that Jan could not fathom.

They talked then about the Mohawk and trading and living with the English.

He could see a tattoo on her left ear, the marking of a slave. He had not noticed that before. That meant she had not been held for ransom, and he wondered how the Abenaki had treated her.

He showed her the Bible he'd purchased.

When she asked him if he'd ever read the Bible, he told her that his mother taught him to read Dutch starting with Genesis. He knew all the stories.

That made her smile. They talked more about their homelands and he found out she was not English after all, but Irish.

The aunt came in and joined their conversation. He was telling them both the story of the time when LaRue tried to turn a foundling moose into a packhorse when someone knocked at the door.

It was a man with black boots and a green overcoat.

The aunt introduced him as Michael O'Day, a farmer just outside the city and from the same town in Ireland as Shannon.

He looked at Jan and then walked straight to Shannon, caught up her hand, and kissed it.

"And who is this great fellow?” he asked.

"A trapper I met while among the Mohawk,” Shannon said.

The aunt laid her hand on Michael's arm. “Shannon and Michael are to be married in the spring."

Jan's heart sank. “Oh, I see. Well, then. You've found yourself quite a woman, Mister O'Day. Quite a woman."

He suddenly didn't know what else to say. An odd silence hung in the air and he said, “I think I must be on my way. But I give you one warning, Mister O'Day. If you're ever in fight, never let her near a corn stick."

Shannon smiled.

"A corn stick?” asked O'Day.

"She can tell you,” said Jan. “Enjoy the cheese for lunch.” And then he picked up his hat and coat and left. He told himself it was probably better this way. A farmer would provide a stability that he never could.

On the way back to the ship he felt a bit unsteady and wondered if he really was over the illness that had afflicted him on the trip down. So instead of visiting a tavern, he reported to the captain and slept onboard. In the morning they shoved off before daylight.

That winter was colder than the last. The snows drifted in some places higher than his head. On Sundays, he took his books to the post and read to the men who were there. Lancaster said he'd heard there was a song of songs in the Bible.

But Jan acted like he didn't know what he was talking about. He simply did not want to read them the Song of Solomon. In fact, there were ministers who thought it didn't even belong in the Holy Book.

When he read about Elijah calling fire down on the priests of Baal, English Pete commented it was a shame no prophet was alive today to call fire down on the French.

LaRue protested, but most of the men at the post were English and they shouted him down.

* * * *

In June the Mohawk and Abenaki skirmished with each other. During that time Jan heard that Shannon had reappeared among the villages. With all the battles and various parties skulking in the woods, it was not a safe time for her to return.

A few weeks later Iron Wood asked for crates of powder, balls, and muskets. Jan brought a mule loaded with the contraband. He also made sure to pack a special musket with crows carved in the stock.

Crow Child did not disappoint him. He proudly delivered a mixture of wampum and beaver and then whooped when he saw the special musket.

Of course, the first thing Willow did was turn his face to look at his tattoo. Then she shook her head and walked away.

It seemed, despite all his efforts, he was making her into an enemy.

He took his mule out to pasture and saw Shannon at the river washing clothes on a rock. He walked up behind her.

"Miss Burke,” he said.

Shannon turned in fright and walloped him upside the head with her soap.

"Och,” he said and wiped the suds away from his eye.

"Do you scare all the women?” she asked.

"Oh, I scare them all, but it seems you're the only one that intends to make me pay for it."

She turned back to scrubbing her clothes.

"It's a dangerous time, Miss Burke, or should I say O'Day?"

"It seems I was bred for such a life."

"And where's Mister O'Day?"

"Sleeping with his pigs."

She said that with no love. He felt better about this. He wasn't the only one who struggled at the beginning of a marriage.

"Is he here then? Trading pigs?"

"No,” she said. “He's back in New York. He called it off."

"The engagement?"

Shannon nodded.

Why on earth would the man do that? He looked at her. She didn't show any sign of feeling sad. But she wouldn't. She'd lived with the Abenaki.

He wouldn't say anything. He knew what it was like to have the lads at the post poke at such a loss. It was all in good fun to make him feel better, but it never did.

Jan's mother always told him that the finest gift he ever gave her was the day he'd done her wash. So instead of saying something, Jan took her basket of washed clothes and asked her where her line hung. He stood hanging up a petticoat, when she joined him with the rest of the wash.

"So you've come back to the Mohawks for good?"

"It seems they don't care about my past,” she said.

She was right. The Mohawk would prize her father. “Devil Jack was a bloody man,” said Jan. “But sometimes a man has to be bloody to survive."

She looked over the clothesline at him. “He said he didn't want dirty undergarments."

"What?"

"O'Day."

And the Dutch were marked for their fastidiousness. But then that didn't make any sense. “So you were a poor housekeeper? He could have hired a maid."

"I was with the Abenaki as a young woman,” she said.

Ah, he was so slow sometimes. Her ear tattoo was that of a concubine. He should have made that connection. But wouldn't O'Day have known that when he engaged her? Perhaps O'Day suspected some things. But then, for some men, knowing what happens in general is not the same as knowing specifically what happened to the women you're to marry.

If O'Day was that type of a man, he was a fool.

"Do you have a child then?” asked Jan.

"I did. But my husband sold him away to humiliate me."

"The Abenaki are worthless dog turds,” he said.

"Only some of them,” she said.

And then he realized her son was probably still among them, sold to another village. Besides, she had once been Abenaki herself.

"You are right,” he said. “There are devils among all men."

* * * *

That night Iron Wood and most of his warriors left. They returned the next day with much shouting and hung fifteen scalps on their palisades at the entrance. Many wore French hats. This would bring a reprisal. The French would seek revenge.

He found Shannon outside the city cleaning muskets. “Do you not think it a good time to leave?” he asked.

"And go where?"

Jan didn't have a good answer to that.

"I'll stay here. They can use my skills."

"A teacher can't do much in a time of battle."

"I'm no fine lady, remember?” She picked up a musket that stood in a round stack and with amazing speed half-cocked it, poured in the powder, inserted the ball, withdrew the rod, rammed the ball home, then replaced the rod.

A person could not load a musket that quickly unless they'd done it hundreds of times.

"I'll stand upon that wall,” she said. “I have five of these children trained to load the musket. Do you know how many balls I can put in the air?"

Jan looked at Shannon with new eyes. By the Holy Mother, Devil Jack did have a daughter.

"I can't imagine. I've never met a woman quite like you,” said Jan. “You're something of an inspiration. Maybe I'll stay."

"You have no ties here,” she said.

He thought about that. He didn't have family here, but then again, this was really the only family he had. These savages and the lads at the post. And if he had to choose, well, he'd rather stay with the savages.

"You're right,” he said. “But then I've no love for the Abenaki either."

"It's a good thing this village purchased what powder they did,” she said.

"Yes,” he said. “I'm thinking they were waiting for my load before going off on that raid. I can tell you one thing, these fields will run with blood."

"One of these days,” she said, “it will be my son that comes painted for war."

* * * *

The Abenaki and French came just before dawn. A village boy went out to the stream to check his weirs. He managed to yell twice before they cut his throat.

A warrior on the rampart heard him and gave the warning cry. Flaming arrows flew over the palisades and into the roofs of the longhouses. Jan saw one bury itself in a woman's back as she ran away.

The warning had come almost too late. The Abenaki were within yards of the entrance when Iron Wood's warriors poured out of the village to meet them. Warriors ran up the ladders and fired muskets and arrows.

Jan decided to stay back by the entrance. The ends of the palisades overlapped here so you could not get a straight shot into the village. If any of these devils wanted to get in, they'd have to go through the Dutch Bear. And by William, he'd smash them to pieces.

The two sides on the field clashed and mingled. Not wanting to hit their own, the archers and musketeers on the wall ceased firing.

Then a cluster of Abenaki broke the line and ran for the entrance. Their faces were painted in horizontal white and black stripes.

It had been too long since Jan had seen any real battle, and he could feel himself begin to quail. There was only one solution to that. Jan raised his musket and shot one of the demons in the belly. Then he took up his war club.

The first one to close with him leapt like a deer. Jan's war club was longer than most of those the Iroquois used. So he was able to smash the inside of the man's elbow as he came at him. Then he stepped out of the man's path and with a roar crushed the side of his head.

The Iron Wood warrior next to Jan fell then began to drag himself back into the village.

A yell rose from the far end of the village. Jan glanced back. Archers ran along the rampart back towards the noise.

He hoped Iron Wood's runners were fleet. And then he realized they ran because the village was surrounded. The runners had probably not made it more than twenty rods into the woods.

The Abenaki in front of him began to retreat, and Iron Wood's men chased after them.

Something was not right. They never broke off the attack so quickly. And then Jan realized he'd seen no French. He looked at the woods.

The further the warriors ran, the more room they gave someone lurking in the woods to make for the village. Only a handful of warriors could defend the village from the inside. It took many more to attack.

It was a ruse. The retreat was a ruse.

He yelled to the archer above him to prepare for an attack from the woods. The archer barked orders to the others on the wall and then let out a yell. It was the call for retreat. Others on the wall took it up.

A few of Iron Wood's warriors turned. And then the main body stopped its chase.

The woods boiled with men. French and Indian came rushing out.

They were half the distance to the village before the warriors in the field caught up with those in the rear.

There was no way Jan and the seven who stood with him could hold the entrance. There had to be two hundred French coming down upon him.

The French line stopped and fired a volley that dropped four of the men with Jan and sent chips of wood flying. One chip struck him on the cheek. Another few inches and it would have put his eye out.

He retreated into the village. Women and children stood on the walls armed with bows. Shannon stood among them with her five boys. She shot and took a ready musket from the boy behind her, shot again, took another, shot again.

He needed to find the barricades. The village kept them close to the entrance. He and the other three lifted them into place. They set the fourth just before the French broke upon them.

The arrows and musket fire rained down upon the attackers, but there were simply too many of them and they reached the barricade.

The first two men over were shot with arrows. Jan finished them off when they reached the ground.

He heard a cry and an Iron Wood woman fell from the wall and crashed almost at his feet. More men tried to leap the barricade with the same result. And then he heard a volley of muskets crack at his back.

He turned and saw a dozen French loading muskets. They'd broken through the other entrance. Two of them took arrows and fell.

A group of young warriors rushed those remaining. Only lads. He hoped they had learned their killing lessons well. Jan searched for Shannon on the wall, but saw only her five loaders.

His heart fell. She must have been shot.

In front of him more French and Abenaki tried to break through. He and the other warriors rushed up the barricade to meet the attackers, but they could not hold. Too many men got past them.

And then Jan found himself back in the village swinging for his life. He downed five men and then saw some Abenaki running for a ladder.

He turned to chase and found Shannon had reappeared. She stood with her boys, blood smeared down her cheek. She must have taken only a grazing.

One of the men threw a tomahawk that struck one of Shannon's boys in the head.

She turned her musket down the ladder and blew the first man off; she took another musket and did the same to the second.

But the enemy in the back of the village gained the rampart and now ran toward Shannon.

"Shannon,” he yelled and pointed.

That distraction cost him. He saw someone out of the corner of his eye. He was fast enough to avoid getting his shoulder crushed, but he was not fast enough to avoid the sharp point of the man's war club in his back.

Jan swung his war club into the man's face. But then another Abenaki stood before him. Jan roared and charged.

The man was quick as a snake. He ducked Jan's swing twice and then smashed Jan's fingers.

Jan dropped his club.

The man drew back for a killing blow.

Then there was a wet thud and half of the man's neck disappeared. Another shot took out the man behind him.

Jan looked up. Shannon hadn't missed a beat. She handed her smoking musket to one of her four boys and took another.

He picked up his war club with his left hand and limped to the barricade. He found Frenchmen penned in by those above, Iron Wood's warriors coming back from their chase, and those that fought inside.

The attackers died in that spot.

A yell of victory rose from the other end of the village. The warriors there must have chased the attackers out of the far entrance.

However, many of the French and Abenaki had retreated to the woods.

The village regrouped. Jan stood at the entrance and waited for another charge. They came, the French in their pretty lines and the Abenaki yelling like devils. There were still so many of them.

He felt weak in his knees and fell to the ground. He tried to crawl out of the way but didn't get far. He lay there watching the backs of the warriors.

The attack broke upon the village. He looked for Shannon and found her. Then his vision started to blur.

It was very possible that too much of his life had already leaked out his back.

Men and women yelled all about him. Musket smoke clouded his vision even further. An Abenaki fell crossways over his legs. Someone scuffed dirt in his face. And then another cheer rose up from the walls and the noise of the attack broke off.

"They're running,” someone said.

"Don't let them escape!"

Then all went black.

* * * *

He found himself on his stomach in a longhouse. Willow sat on the floor below him.

"We drove them?” he asked.

She turned and smiled. “We slaughtered them from here to the river."

Jan looked at his splinted fingers. He remembered Shannon on the wall. “And Bright Waters?"

"She's a demon,” said Willow. “All the warriors want to take her as wife. But I don't think she'll accept."

"Why?” he asked.

"Because all she's done is come in here and check on you."

He suddenly suspected Willow. He reached up to feel his patch. It was still there.

She smiled at him.

Then he brushed his cheek. There was no beard. He felt his chin then the top of his head. He had no hair at all. She'd shaved him.

"What have you done?"

"Saved your life,” she said. “Be grateful."

"You haven't been bringing your daughter in to look at me, have you?"

Willow smiled. “Of course not."

He didn't trust her. He asked her to fetch him a looking glass and held it up to his face. He looked like a fright with his tanned brow and cheeks all surrounded by the white skin that had been hidden under his hair. But the tattoo had not changed color.

* * * *

That evening he felt well enough to walk so he got up and shuffled outside. He must have been asleep two days for he saw none of the dead. One of the longhouses was now nothing more than ash.

He saw Shannon. She stood with her back to him grinding corn with a foot-long pestle.

He walked up behind her, but not too close. “Miss Burke,” he said.

She did not startle this time, but turned and smiled at him.

"Come here and sit by me,” she said.

"Is it safe?"

"What were you expecting?"

"A clop with that murderous pestle."

"And you would have received one,” she said. “But it seems you've learned it's bad manners to sneak up on people."

Jan went and sat down on the bench beside her as she ground corn into meal. She'd stitched the gash that went from her cheek to one ear.

"That's quite a wound you have there."

"I'm afraid it won't do in proper society."

"Hang proper society."

"Yes, but I will miss the cheeses."

He looked over at her. There was a playfulness in her expression. But he didn't know how to build on it, so he changed the subject.

"Was your son among the dead?"

"No,” she said. “He's not old enough yet to fight with the men. I wonder if I'll even recognize him after his growth comes upon him."

"You'll know him."

"But not from a distance,” she said and then was quiet for some time.

She emptied out a bowl full of meal and then looked over at him. “Why do you wear that patch?” she asked.

"I've got a mole the size of a mushroom growing there."

She reached up for it, but he held her hand.

"No,” he said.

"It's not a mole,” she said.

"It is."

"Do you take me for a fool?"

"Fine,” he said. He'd tell her the truth. He doubted she'd believe it. He wouldn't have. “It's a bit of Iroquois devilry to help me find a mate."

"I know,” she said. “Willow showed it to me."

Willow. First it was a shaving and now this.

"I've seen something similar twice before while I was with the Abenaki."

She knew what it was. He felt ashamed. It was a weak man who tried to buy or trick people into liking him.

"Why cover it up?"

He didn't want to explain it all to her. “It's devil craft."

"I would think the power to magnify the beauty found in unlikely places is a gift from God."

She smiled at him. Her expression was full of warmth. Or was that pity he saw? He'd mistaken pity for kind words before and paid dearly for it. Of course, Shannon did not seem to be one of those social ladies who smiled at and touched every man they met on the back of the hand.

"You don't believe it's witchcraft?"

"I believe that our Lord rains his gifts on the heathen as well as the just."

She reached for the patch again.

This time he let her move it aside.

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Found in shops or on bookshelves or in mailboxes (usually ours). The Forty-Niners by Alan Moore, et al—Excellent prequel to Top 10. A little easy on good vs. evil but some wonderful characters and lovely world-building. That also applies to Alex Robinson's new book, Tricked (Top Shelf), an alternate history of indie pop in the last ten years. New cover coming (yay!). Read!

Mutate no.9 (mutatezine.com). Sexuality, the Queer Zine Archive Project, “Bi Like Me,” and more. In that vertical half-letter format that can be frustrating but survives. All Flee by Gavin Burrows & Simon Gane (Top Shelf again). Not all about Godzilla and pals, but mostly. Get your giant monster fix here. A Rough Guide to Bicycle Maintenance (Microcosm.com). The bike shop guy says it's the end of the biking season and the rains and floods agree. Surely not! Take the tools up, look after your bike, get into your union suit and saddle up. Fifty Degrees Below, Kim Stanley Robinson.

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Contribandeaus

John Brown wrote the first draft of “Bright Waters” in Orson Scott Card's Literary Bootcamp. Having lived in the Netherlands, he has a particular affection for the hero of this story. John won first prize in Writers of the Future (13) under the name Bo Griffin. He is currently at work on an epic fantasy novel about a boy, a girl, and a wayward monster. He now lives in the hinterlands of Utah.

Peter Dabbene is a Trenton, NJ-based writer. Several of his short plays have been produced in Philadelphia theaters. Most recently, some of his short stories have been published online at Parenthetical Note and Eyeshot. He has also published two book-length collections of short stories, Prime Movements and Glossolalia, as well as a novel, Mister Dreyfus’ Demons.

Diana Pharaoh Francis is the author of fantasy novels Path of Fate (nominated for the Mary Roberts Rinehart Award) and Path of Honor. Path of Blood, which will complete the trilogy, will be published May 2006 by NAL/Roc. Diana is an assistant editor for The Broadsheet. She holds a BA & MA in creative writing, and a PhD in Literature and Theory. She currently teaches at the University of Montana-Western and is madly at work on her next novel. Her web site is www.sff.net/people/di-francis

Christien Gholson's stories, poems and translations (of Rimbaud's Illuminations) have appeared in Hanging Loose, The Sun, Big Scream, Blue Mesa Review, etc. He grew up in Southern Belgium and Northern Florida—places where the creatures inside a Bosch painting are very comfortable. A book of prose-poems (Faces in the Gallery) is forthcoming from Hanging Loose Press, along with a chapbook (Phenomenology) from March Street Press.

Seana Graham is a bookseller in Santa Cruz, California and a closet scribbler of long standing. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Red Wheelbarrow Literary Magazine and Eclipse. LCRW is the first zine she's been published in, and she believes appearing here will significantly help her ‘coolness quotient'—that is, if anything actually can.

How do we get our stories? We start with the set of people who read. Then we split out those who write with a butter knife (or some other blunt instrument). From these we filter out those who write well (and can hold their breath under water). Lastly we ask our neighbors to bury the stories in the garden for at least one season. We print whatever stories might still be legible.

Sam MacArthur is an artist and writer. He lives in Edinburgh, Scotland.

David Connerley Nahm lives in Carrboro, NC. He has a wife with a cat named Typee, a band named Audubon Park, and is halfway to a law degree. Sometimes, he performs stand-up comedy. His story “Sitting on a Bench in the Park” appeared in LCRW #14. Please visit the Tropic of Food (audubonpark.blogspot.com) if so inclined.

On Selling Out: Yes, we will, thank you. Would we take the opportunity of having a larger platform to throw our zine (re-imagined as glossy with chocolate-bar pullouts and ads for the latest solar cars) out from into the reading masses? Offers to the usual address.

Phil Raines and Harvey Welles have had stories published in Albedo One, Leading Edge, On Spec, Aurealis and New Genre as well as the recent collection of new Scottish fantastic fiction, Novia Scotia. Their stories have been anthologised in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, including “The Fishie,” which was published in LCRW no. 12. Philip lives in Glasgow, Scotland, and is a member of the Glasgow Science Fiction Writers Circle. Harvey lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Deborah Roggie writes fantasy and lives in New Jersey with her husband and 15-year-old son. Her story “The Enchanted Trousseau” first appeared in LCRW no.14 and was selected for the anthology Fantasy: The Best of 2004. Forthcoming stories include “Thievery,” in the anthology Eidolon, and “Swansdown” (Realms of Fantasy). She is currently working on a novel.

Marly Youmans is the author of six books. The most recent are Ingledove (FSG), a young adult/crossover fantasy set in the Southern Appalachians, and Claire, a book of poetry (Louisiana State UP). Her novel, The Wolf Pit (FSG), won the Michael Shaara Award. Marly, her husband, and three children live in a snow castle mere spitting distance from the Baseball Hall of Fame and the grave of James Fenimore Cooper in the semi-fictional Yankee village of Cooperstown.

Alette J. Willis writes from Canada.

Visit www.lcrw.net for information on additional titles by this and other authors.

Table of Contents

The Pirate's True Love by Seana Graham

The Fire Girl by Marly Youmans

All The Things She Wanted by Philip Raines and Harvey Welles

You Accept What You Get When You're Eating with Death

The Mushroom Duchess by Deborah Roggie

Daylighting the Donwell River by Alette J. Willis

Native Spinsters by Diana Pharaoh Francis

"Discrete Mathematics” by Olaf and Lemeaux; or, the Severed Hand

SHH by Peter Dabbene

Bright Waters by John Brown

Contribandeaus

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